Review Summary: Lord Huron create an album that will safely satisfy their base, while possibly hinting at a more exciting future.
Few indie-folk artists have climbed the ladder of popularity in recent years as rapidly as Lord Huron. Fueled in large part by the delayed (but immense) viral success of their 2015 single ‘The Night We Met’, it also shouldn’t be overlooked that their last LP was their crowning achievement – the string-swept, nostalgia-dripping
Long Lost. All of this has led Lord Huron to become one of the premier modern indie acts, full-stop. The roll out of their long-awaited follow-up,
The Cosmic Selector, Vol. 1, was as confusing as it was intriguing. The lead single, ‘Who Laughs Last’, featured spoken passages from Kristen Stewart (yes,
that Kristen Stewart) atop fuzzy, spaced out guitars and a fiery chorus from Ben Schneider. It shouldn’t have worked, but it did – and in a strange way, it also set the table for
The Cosmic Selector, Vol. 1 to be an experimental push for Lord Huron. However, the subsequent releases of ‘Nothing I Need’ and ‘Looking Back’ saw the band firmly entrenched in their roots – leading some to wonder exactly what direction the new record would pursue.
After
The Cosmic Selector, Vol. 1’s release, I can’t say that we’re any closer to an answer. In many ways, this is a traditional sounding Lord Huron release: we see Schneider croon melodically and launch into his glorious refrains, and some of the time, it even lives up to their very best work: case-in-point the beautifully melancholic and ever-infectious acoustic picking of ‘Nothing I Need’. Not far behind is ‘The Comedian’ – a slinking, stunning piano ballad that wouldn’t feel out of place at a lounge bar, and ‘Bag of Bones’ which sounds very
Strange Trails-esque with its rugged outlaw vibes. What is perhaps most surprising is that the album’s uncharacteristic risks actually feel like the biggest draw here. The aforementioned 'Who Laughs Last', despite its odd choice with the Stewart feature, is magnetic in a way that most of the other songs aren’t. Its explosive rock energy and daring creativity represent friction to the diminishing returns that inevitably come with executing a similar style for well over a decade. Similarly, the breezy, gorgeous harmonies brought forth by Kazu Makino on ‘Fire Eternal’ breathe fresh air into
The Cosmic Selector right as some of its slower, homogenous folk ballads begin to blur together.
That isn’t to say that Lord Huron don’t succeed at their own bread-and-butter here, it’s just that they’ve set the bar fairly high. The rich harmonica that graces ‘Digging Up The Past’ is a nice touch, but it sounded even more vibrant when they did it on 2015’s ‘Dead Man’s Hand’. Emotive, grand curtain-calls like ‘Life Is Strange’ are absolutely affecting, but pale in the shadow of 2021’s similar – but far more towering – ‘What Do It Mean’. The strings on ‘It All Comes Back’ are soothing and beautiful, but don’t recall the same sense of wistful longing as ‘Long Lost’. To a newcomer these songs are plenty lush, but for those who’ve been around before the ‘The Night We Met’ crowd, a lot of these tracks will feel like watered down versions of previous masterpieces – and that’s disappointing no matter how you try to spin this record’s “conceptual vision” as some kind of cosmic jukebox, where – just like life – you “get what you get, even if it’s a b-side!”…or whatever.
The nuts and bolts of
The Cosmic Selector stack up to the likes of
Strange Trails or
Vide Noir, in the sense that this album will likely go down as another very good (but not essential) Lord Huron release – which is to say that the respective crowns belonging to
Lonesome Dreams and
Long Lost are in no peril. It remains to be seen if there will be additional installations within this apparent series (why else title it Vol. 1?), but our introduction to
The Cosmic Selector is one where Lord Huron’s bolder ideas outshine their familiar ones. Unless they have it in them to churn out an entire volume that lives up to shimmering gems like ‘Nothing I Need’, then it might be worth it for the band to explore their wilder side. For as breathtaking as their entire discography has been, that’s the one thing we still haven’t gotten from them – something truly experimental and “out there.”
The Cosmic Selector Vol. 1 proves that they have the chops to pull it off, although they don’t commit to it here.
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