Opening for Active Child at the Troubadour on Thursday was Lord Huron, and even though I have seen them multiple times – or I should say because I have seen them multiple times – I was happy to witness once again one of their beautiful performances. The music is still very uplifting and damn full of vital energy, sincere and draining its strength from nature, and for this reason, not that far away from the sound of their tour band mate Active Child.
I have already said everything about their luminous music, the tropical rhythms, the steel drums, the bright African guitars, but not the Vampire Weekend way, no Lord Huron is more eerie, more abstract, more on the dreamy side…. When Vampire Weekend never leave their campus, Lord Huron attack the large open spaces, climb the high mountains and cross the mighty seas.
The band made the crowd move to their calypso-esque rhythms, previewing several new songs off their upcoming album, which should be out soon, seeing how abundant the new material was.
Wearing retro clothes, flowers at his boutonniere, sea waves painted on his guitar, frontman Ben Schneider looked like a romantic adventurer of the last century, developing a unique imagery matching his original sound. Surrounded by five musicians, some of them wearing sort of Tuareg-inspired outfits, they started with two new songs with delicate percussion, which sounded very much in the vein of their previous material, before inviting a friend on stage for their addictive and euphoric ‘We Went Wild’. It is subtle hybrid music, expressive, soothing, moving and spine tickling, with its ascending uplifting moments and its Midwest-meets-Africa-and-other-Tropics feeling.
‘It’s good to be here again, it's joy, pure joy’, said Ben Schneider as the band was playing their last show of their tour with Active Child.
During their set of seven songs, I also recognized ‘The Problem with Your Daughter’ and its catchy playful guitar loop, and ‘When Will I See You Again’, and its definitive longing for travel – ‘If you got what you came for why should you stay?’ They closed their set with ‘The Stranger’ and their friend was back on stage, making everyone dance with joyous and bouncy rhythms despite the threat all over the lyrics (‘Of all the strangers you're the strangest that I've seen/I'm not afraid to die/I can't trust anyone or anything these days’).
They played the new songs – I could give you the half titles I read on the setlist: ‘Ends’, ‘Man Who’, ‘She Lit’, and ‘Road’ – with the same ease and joy, which proved that their new album is to be looking forward for sure. Despite the dark nature of the lyrics, the set was sunny, and after ‘We Went Wild', Schneider explained that the song was about a girl you would want to live with for eternity, whereas the next song, a new one, was about a girl who would make you want to die…. You cannot make this up.
