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The Lumineers @ Metro City, WA – 22/04/17 (Live Review)

Songs of bittersweet resolution, of poignant faded memories, of rites of passage not clearly understood but certainly reflected upon. It’s the songs that tie us, a common thread of experience, and The Lumineers knew how to bring a whole audience together and provide a little healing with a 90 minute sing-a-long.

You can get an inkling about the impact a band’s music has had by the audience that turns up, and in that respect The Lumineers deserve a tip of the hat. Cowboy hats and country folk, older Gen-X’ers and younger twenty somethings, plus the obligatory smattering of hipsters made for one of the most varied crowds encountered in recent memory.

Support band The Money War had the pleasure of performing to an essentially packed venue, rolling out their recent work including a straightforward version of Lindsey Buckingham’s Trouble. Indeed there was some love for the seventies band Fleetwood Mac, as The Chain darkly played just before the band came out to kick it off with Sleep On The Floor.

The American folk/rock band have honed on the skill of arranging ardent songs with confessional lyrics of melancholy, underpinned with lead singer Wesley Schultz’s vocal timbre warming everything up. What eventuated pitched from resolved ennui to weary acceptance, and accompanied by cellist Neyla Pekarek there was an emotional brevity that just raised the spirit of the music. So when Schultz sung “Like the Dead Sea. You told me I was like the Dead Sea. You’ll never sink when you are with me” in Dead Sea the sombre tone of the lyrics is flipped by the building strings, ending with an audience who felt compelled to accompany the band to the song’s conclusion.

The Lumineers – photo by Elizabeth Kent

This is what The Lumineers do so well – thought provoking and downhearted lyrics that are swathed behind the veils of uplifted sprightly melodies and stomping percussion. The audience loved it, obviously captivated as Jeremiah Fraites, looking like the Angus Young of the folk-hipster scene, lead the charge through Charlie Boy and into a portion of the set where all members went off mic to play at their edge of the stage.

It was a completely endearing move that pointed at how the band connects with their fans and how they acknowledge the popularity of their songs. Certainly the first chant of “Ho!” was unexpected but after an uproar, and the band bellowing out the lyrics, Metro City’s cavern reverberated with the rumble of everyone singing Ho Hey. A sad song about the end of a relationship had never felt so joyous, and whilst it did mean that band became muted for the few songs they did this way, it was pretty special to experience as a collective group.

A Bob Dylan cover Subterranean Homesick Blues changed the gear up leading to their more rollicking songs Ophelia and Big Parade but the tempo was downshifted again reverberating back to reflection as Shultz revealed a sorrowful tale about finding a pistol in his late father’s sock drawer before easing into an emotional Gun Song.

That is not to say that The Lumineers are purveyors of dour music, on the contrary it is surprisingly a beguiling waltz of hope that things will be better understood with the passage of time. It’s nostalgia in the making, perhaps unbeknownst to this crowd. It’s a cry into the void, it’s strumming on your guitar or clapping to the beat of song with your friends it times of disillusionment, and as Schultz crooned in Stubborn Love, “It’s better to feel pain, than nothing at all” everyone in that audience agreed, giving such a booming sing-a-long for encore that you’d think they were the ones sending the band off well for a great night.

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