Corb Lund

We live in a perpetual state of war. It’s an obvious subject, yet a dangerous one. Every songwriter owes it to themselves to confront it, either allegorically or directly.

On his fifth album, Horse Soldier! Horse Soldier!, Corb Lund writes about warfare via something he knows about first hand: horses. It’s been almost a century since most of us pondered the cavalry’s integral role in military history. But as Lund points out on the globetrotting title track, you can still find traces of the cavalry in more contemporary conflicts, like the one going on today in Afghanistan.

Armed with plenty of books on military history throughout the ages—as well as some Gabriel Garcia Marquez and tales of the French foreign legion—Lund says he wanted to write about “timeless themes” rather than today’s headlines. “I tend to dig around for exotic detail,” he says. “Plus, I've never been much of an overtly political writer. I respect that form of art, and I do have very strong beliefs about th...