No Horses - No Horses

Band: No Horses
Album: No Horses
Label: Self Released
Year: 2008

One of my all-time favourite local bands is this dearly departed Vancouver by way of Prince George roots rock unit. They released this lone album and raised and appropriate amount of hell in dive bars around BC and beyond during their heyday, before drifting off, as so many good bands do, to disband and get real jobs and raise families. But what they left behind is a reverent vivisection of Crazy Horse's unhinged and sloppy roots rock replete with wailing solo's, nicotine and whiskey-tinged gang vocals and tales of drunken debauchery. What's more, the were by all accounts a force to be reckoned with onstage, although sadly I never caught them when they were active.

"Grab Yer Coat" kicks in the door like a double-barelled shotgun blast, opening the album with a furious barrage of bent guitar notes and crashing drums set to lyrics about waking up hungover after a night of drinking alone. This is dark, depressing stuff, a worm's eye view of the rock n' roll lifestyle from veterans who have been doing it so long it's long since lost it's fun and hardened into a habit. Tracks like "Tombstone Eyes" and "Winter Park" weave tales of drugged out losers and hard working grinders down on their luck together with jangly country-rock guitars and a tough as nails rhythm section. You can almost smell the acrid smoke and stale booze sweat of the bars where this stuff was honed. "Shakedown" even offers a glimpse into the hard reality of making a living playing music, with it's images of a road-weary band tearing apart an empty venue on a Monday night, and it's refrain of, "Don't let 'em shake you down, don't let 'em fuck you on your guarantee!"

The Neil Young influence looms large here, as it does over the work of similarly rustic flannel-bedecked Vancouver rockers like Ladyhawk, Featherwolf and Red Cedar, but like these other bands, No Horses add enough personality to their work to avoid mere mimicry. The band 's tales of life on the road center the band geographically and name check bars and gigs and people, lending the songs a sense of authenticity. These feel like real stories about real people and places. What's more, the burnt out and wasted vibe here recalls a sort of alternate reality Rolling Stones circa 1972 if the Stones were just another band grinding it out on the circuit instead of English lords holed up in a mansion in the French countryside.

The album's centerpiece is a character portrait of a vagrant alcoholic in Prince George that may or may not be based on an actual person. "The Great Tabor Mountain Fire of 1961" opens with a plaintive acoustic figure before lurching to life with a wobbly, whammy-heavy guitar solo. As the song builds over 6 minutes, the vocals become gradually become more frenzied as the tale reaches it's climax. It's spine tingling, chilly stuff, and the band matches the tone of the story by rocking the hell out as the backing vocals burn a vicious hook into your head. Balls out rock n 'roll doesn't get much better than this.

No Horses toured up and down the west coast for over a decade, but this record is all that remains of their career, as the band members have all gone on to other things. But their self-titled record is a hell of a legacy, a harrowing portrait of rock on the wrong side of the tracks and a testament to the power of some dudes, some beer, a drum kit, a bass and a couple of guitars. Don't let anyone tell you they don't make great rock anymore. They're just not looking hard enough.