Band makes good on Seattle indie roots

Ben Bridwell has come a long way since his days with Carissa’s Wierd.

As a part of that Seattle indie band in the 1990s, Bridwell often appeared in Spokane playing eerily mournful orchestral rock to a handful of people at bars like The B-Side and Mootsy’s.

It was piano-and-violin-laden, tears-in-your-beers slow-rock that had deliberately limited appeal.

Now Bridwell is fronting a band that has worldwide fame and critical acclaim that spans far beyond the dark-corner watering holes around the Pacific Northwest.

After Carissa’s Wierd dissolved, Bridwell and co-founder Mat Brooke started Band of Horses, which played an opening set for Iron and Wine that caught the ear of Northwest indie-rock institution Sub Pop Records.

Soon after that, Band of Horses landed a spot on “Late Night with David Letterman.” Its 2006 debut full-length “Everything All the Time” was a favorite all over the blogosphere on the strength of the single “The Funeral,” a song drenched in cavernously reverbed vocals and swelling waves and crashing walls of melodic, melancholy guitars that have become BOH’s signature.

Paste Magazine called the album one of the 10 best of 2007, and music from it appeared on television programs such as “CSI,” “90210,” “One Tree Hill” and a Ford commercial.

Neither “The Funeral” nor “Everything All the Time” were flukes, but much changed with Band of Horses after “Everything.”

Brooke left the band, and the rest of the band left Seattle. While Brooke went on to start his own project, The Grand Archives (which also signed with Sub Pop), Bridwell and Band of Horses relocated to South Carolina before releasing a sophomore album, “Cease to Begin,” in 2007.

While “Cease to Begin” doesn’t have an instant win like “Funeral,” it did chart on Billboard and it expands on BOH’s mastered Northwest indie rock sound by adding Southernish qualities to sophisticated and sometimes subtly complex arrangements.

Fast forward to 2009 and Bridwell and company are regularly touring Europe and headlining major festivals around the globe while putting the finishing touches on a third album, which is being recorded at the renowned FAME Studios in Alabama.

Bridwell told Rolling Stone magazine he has more than 27 songs written for the album, originally slated for a 2008 release. Some have been performed onstage, such as a track called “Older,” on which he plays autoharp.