Album of the Week | Being Dead: When Horses Would Run
On their debut album, the Texas trio shine through weird, improbable and relentless amalgams of surf-rock, jazz and punk

Being Dead—Falcon Bitch, Gumball and Ricky Moto—are a trio of Texas-bred besties who make technicolor punk for folks who think the Beach Boys are pretty groovy—yet their music rebels against any sense of influence that can be so easily pinned down. Their work is maximalist and bubblegum bright; full of heart and absurd landscapes just off the road less traveled. “Fields of marigolds and reading, blue skies, white clouds,” Gumball sings at the genesis of lead single “Muriel’s Big Day Off.” “Took a trip into the city, strollin’ around. Find a girlfriend or a boyfriend, baby, lay me down.” Our first proper introduction to Being Dead arrives on the heels of the band taking acid. Mid-trip, they picked up a guitar and, instead of paying much attention to the chords, Falcon Bitch and Gumball found themselves engulfed in the beauty enconscing the patterns of their fingers. Thus, the opening chapter for Being Dead is this surf-rock, jazzed-out cluster of rock ‘n’ roll that is, puzzlingly, worn-in and brand new all at once. When Horses Would Run, their action-packed debut LP, is, in no short words, the most exciting debut of 2023 so far.
All at once, “Muriel’s Big Day Off” puts on different masks: dive bar piano, mariachi-style handclaps, “ooos” that coil around a buoyant, pixelated soundscape. Much like what black midi are doing across the pond, Being Dead do their damnedest to stuff every track with as much firepower and eccentricity that a couple of pals can possibly muster. Their palette is, seemingly, never-ending; no approach is too far out of reach. When Horses Would Run is a huge leap from their 2019 EP Fame Money Death By Drive By, which saw the band tinkering with lo-fi aspirations and freak pop agendas without the structure of a full-length project. Though Being Dead have always been chaotic by trade, no one could have predicted how eclectic their own instrumental vernacular would become four years later.
It’s not often that I open a press kit for a band I’ve never heard of and am so immediately blown apart by the work within. But When Horses Would Run is a special record to behold. From the Link Ray guitar rumbles on opener “The Great American Picnic” to the closer “Oklahoma Nova Scotia”—which arrives like Neil Young and Daniel Johnston had a baby out of psychedelic wedlock—there is something on this album for everyone who presses play or shuffle. At 13 tracks, it’s all killer no filler. Even a short arrangement like “God vs. Bible,” which only contains two lines (If God owned the bible, he’d read it everyday) repeated three times, is lush and harmonious. Sandwiched somewhere in-between gospel music and Devo before Devo discovered synth-pop, Being Dead are cowboys getting their rocks off on mad-lib verses and drugged-out backdrops. There is discovery and curiosity at every turn, a swift detour from any of their rock ‘n’ roll contemporaries who fall into a lulling sonic familiarity with every new project.
Being Dead expel all instances of psych-folk pretentiousness across this baker’s dozen of weirdo-concertos. When Horses Would Run is an authentic, dexterous, impressionable stroke of brilliance from three friends who can’t help but make awing music when in company with each other. In a past life, perhaps Gumball and Falcon Bitch met—as they like to joke—as chimney sweeps, shoemakers or acrobats, and that bond feels as mythical as it is touted to be. When the two singers merge their vocals on “Treeland,” it’s cool as hell. A lot of the work on When Horses Would Run derives from the energy of off-kilter, anti-beaten path gonzos, like Sparks, Oingo Boingo or, even, the B-52s. What I mean is, even when you think you’ve settled into the Being Dead metaverse, you are immediately transported into an unfamiliar place.
Take a track like “Last Living Buffalo,” where an art-punk melody cascades into the distorted static of a shouting, seething “You killed him!” crescendo, where Falcon Bitch’s voice peels open into a devastating crack. You have to stay on your toes, because you never know when Being Dead are going to toss you into a beat shift. Their music is a circus in that way, and a glorious one at that. The monotone delivery from Gumball and angelic, New Wave-conjuring tenor of Falcon Bitch will quickly go silent in favor of a jazz non-sequitur—which arrives deftly on “Muriel’s Big Day Off.” The title track employs a theremin that croons like a cowboy whistling at dawn. Tongue-in-cheek isn’t just an idea that’s in Being Dead’s wheelhouse; it’s a weapon in their arsenal. “By the seaside on a summer day, with a whisper like a drop of rain, that’s the color, that’s the shape,” Falcon Bitch opines, with Gumball’s jawing harmonies permeating in the background. “It’s a take on the promised land of sand and sea.”