By 
Ben Bridwell's kids are natural critics. It's been ten years since the release of Band of Horses' first studio album, and the frontman has been a father for eight of them. Lately, he's been on school drop-off duty, a responsibility that syncs up freakishly well with his rock 'n' roll schedule if he isn't on the road. When he was working on Why Are You OK, their fifth full-length that they released last Friday, Bridwell would work at home in South Carolina—his "garbage basement" studio, as he calls it—often through the night, his head rarely hitting the pillow in between his chord-wrangling and the alarm clock that had him waking his daughters. Then, after the girls were seatbelted and before they raised their hands for attendance, is when Bridwell and his brood would get familiar with their potentially new favorite songs.
"I try to push the music I like on them when I can, but mostly I try to reinforce their listening habits and hone in on that," he says. Bridwell is now the father of four: His oldest, Annabelle, turned eight the day after their recent performance on the Late Show with Stephen Colbert. (The late night host wished her a happy birthday shortly before her dad took the stage.) His youngest, Georgia, is only a few months old. "I won't play my stuff so much, but if I have a friend's band that's also in demo mode, and I'm like, 'Dang, this is good as hell!' I'll focus group the shit out of them on the way to school. I trust girls' opinions to check a song more than anybody. Girls, when they love something, they'll listen to it over and over and over. I feel like they do more than boys will. When girls fall in love with a song, when they can get an emotional attachment to something, I trust their opinions sometimes much more than a bro friend of mine who also likes My Morning Jacket or Neil Young or something. I focus group the hell out of them in the morning with a buddy's song, and if they ask me to play it again after it's done, I'll get home after dropping them off, and I'll go, 'You got a good song, homie.'"
While Bridwell steers clear of jamming Band of Horses material into their tender ears, his second oldest, Ivy, did play a part in the creation of his most recent record. Its title came courtesy of Ivy's unintentional text message poetry when she picked up her mom's phone and the mishmash of toddler typing somehow lead to her sending a simple note—Why are you ok— a prompt that Bridwell ran with. It's a vague line without the commitment of a question mark, and yet Why Are You OK poses several questions to the listener over the course of its twelve tracks in varying shades of intensity: "What's your life like with all that you've done?" "Aren't you happy for me?" "Are we really in love, completely in love? Are you happy enough?" "Will you get to the point and walk away, girl?" "Can't you hear me crying? Ain't that enough, alone in the night?"
This was completely unintentional, and Bridewell more or less brings an outstretched palm to his blushing face when asked about the probing, eager inquiries that pepper the record.
"I can mess myself up if I'm thinking about the song too much instead of just doing it," he explains. The blushing subsides. "One of my favorite musicians and songwriters, John Cale, in his autobiography, he talks about hating when people ask questions during songs. It's funny—I can't believe I wouldn't mess myself up more knowing that John Cale wouldn't want you to ask a question in a song right now! Shit!" He laughs. "I'm glad I did it, because it means I put all that other stuff aside and did what came naturally. I didn't even notice that."
Bridwell put a lot aside for Why Are You OK, but that embrace of risk and letting things go didn't come easily. Fans of Band of Horses have come to expect expansive, cinematic rock marinated in melancholy from the South Carolinan outfit by way of "The Funeral," the single from their debut, Everything All the Time, a song that's been ceaselessly licensed for a number of dramatic moments in film and TV. Hits followed in "Is There a Ghost," "Compliments" and other singles plucked from their first four records, which had them moving from indie stalwart Sub Pop to Columbia and ultimately to Interscope, the major label that's releasing Why Are You OK. Instead of signing the deal and taking advantage of Interscope's resources to make the album—which was produced by Jason Lytle of beloved indie act Granddaddy, with Rick Rubin offering his production insight in an occasional consulting capacity—Band of Horses wrote, funded and recorded the whole damn thing first, starting with Bridwell struggling with writer's block as he broke down the barriers of his own anxieties.
This is reflected in the intimate (and sometimes tough) conversations that spring up throughout Why Are You OK, from the assurance-seeking gestures of "Hag" to the somber realizations of "Barrel House." (The latter—the first song the band recorded for the album—literally makes drummer Creighton Barrett's arm hair stand on end to think about it: "The lyrics in that song, I really do believe they're some of the most beautiful lyrics I might've heard from anybody. [Ben] always impresses me.") No songs double-knot direct ties to his marriage, his family, or his own life in any capacity, but each song feels devastatingly autobiographical thanks to Bridwell's cloud-skating tenor and the warmth of the instrumentation behind him. Keeping things abstract keeps those he holds dear protected, but it also kept Bridwell thinking and writing in circles. He eventually shirked that reflex to "throw people off the scent" of his revealing lyrics and hit his stride at home. If carpool duty was calling, it wasn't a blight on his creative process, but a benefit to it.
"It created a sense of urgency because I only had so many hours in a day that I could actually sneak away," he says. "Because of that, I feel like I condensed my powers or whatever when I had to, whereas if I was in a cabin or something I would've been able to dilly-dally, to be indecisive. It became kind of counterproductive. I'm glad that life got in the way. I think I found different material because of it. Some cool stuff happened because I only had so little time and I was surrounded by my life, and I had to be face-to-face with it, instead of using my imagination all day long and getting half a song."
Still, the thought of people looking too deeply into the questions of Why Are You OK—or making incorrect assumptions about them—rattles him a little, but he's working on it. "Even the parents and shit at school, I gotta deal with that as well," he says, chuckling. "All these parents that I see every day dropping off the kids, picking up the kids, going to events and things, the teachers themselves—I do have to deal with this weird public life thing. I'm not exposing myself in a good way to this music. It's a bit nerve-wracking to be like, 'Shit, dude, some people are going to hear these stories and know more about me, more than I'm willing to let them know in a face-to-face scenario!' I don't know how I'll deal with that." He pauses. He shrugs. "I guess I'll go on tour. Maybe that will help."
