Band of Horses Unveil ‘Acoustic at the Ryman’ – Album Premiere

After going big and recording their last album, 2012’s Mirage Rock, with the legendary producer Glyn Johns, Band of Horses scaled back considerably for their new album. Acoustic at the Ryman, which you can preview in its entirety here, is a self-explanatory set, finding the group recording on the historic Nashville stage with little more than a few guitars, a piano and their robust harmonies.

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Yet the album is not “small” in any sense. The band used the high-resolution Direct-Stream Digital (DSD) format to capture both their crackling performance and the palpable energy of the room, and the result is pretty thrilling.

“We aimed to capture the same spirit as the many wild, spontaneous and sometimes ragged performances that the historic building has been known to evoke over the years,” bassist Bill Reynolds tells Rolling Stone. “The result is a completely unrehearsed, unbridled recording from a classic venue that is so dear to our hearts.”

Acoustic at the Ryman is set for release on February 11th via CD, 180-gram vinyl and digital formats. To celebrate they’ll head out on a brief acoustic tour beginning at the Wilshire Ebell Theatre in L.A. on that same day. The tour concludes, fittingly enough, on March 5th at the Ryman.