The Horse - The Horse

The Horse
The Horse
Sad Cow
UK, 2025
LP

Centered around the nucleus of songwriters Owen Kennedy and Luke Cowan, The Horse is a six-piece group based between London and the Fens. Their debut is a breathtaking slow burn of pastoral post-rock and deconstructed folk. The heart of each song is incredibly intimate, close-mic’d and restrained, with plenty of room sound and bags of space, its texture calling to mind the tactile impasto of Cowan’s recent solo album Six Places. From there, the songs slowly blossom with tasteful overdubs including brass, sound collage, pinecone, and wind chimes. With its blend of restraint and ambition, The Horse feels like Mark Hollis’s lone solo album reconceived for a nature trail—the sublime found latent in a quivering fern or soft curl of light.