It’s not often you come across an artist that somehow manages to change their sound so significantly across only a few albums while sounding virtually unchanged. Yet somehow, LA based four-piece Lord Huron have managed to do it. They started their musical career in 2010 as a solo project by frontman, singer, and lyricist, Ben Schneider, who began adding members until he had a full band at his back. Their debut album, Lonesome Dreams, was released in 2012, followed by Strange Trails in 2015, and Vide Noir (French for ‘black void’) in 2018. Multiple songs of theirs have been featured in films and TV shows, such as A Walk in the Woods, Grey’s Anatomy, Vampire Diaries, 13 Reasons Why, and Community, to name a few. While genre classification can be incredibly subjective, I think it’s safe to say that Lord Huron can be considered an indie-alternative band. Within that category, however, they’ve experienced a change from indie folk to something more at home in the category of garage rock. Their first album, Lonesome Dreams has a romantic and almost playful tone to it while being wholly serious in its themes. It’s a very loose concept album, following the eponymous Lord Huron in his first encounter with soon-to-be-friend Admiral Blaquefut while he searches for
his lost love, Helen.The album was inspired by author George Ranger Johnson, who penned a series of 10 western novels between the 60s and 80s. Ever heard of him? If you answered ‘no’ that’s completely understandable, the-not-very-well-known author’s books are the type of thing that you’d be able to find in any given thrift store. If you answered ‘yes’ then I have some bad news: he’s a completely fictional person and only ever existed to give Lonesome Dreams context and inspiration. The really interesting thing about LD is that not only is it a story about these three characters, but frontman Schneider actually created his own little world about which he writes his music. Obviously, a concept album is usually built on fiction in order to tell a story, but rarely does the lore go deeper than the general story told through the songs. This is not the case for Lord Huron. There’s no overarching storyline to the album, but each song is from a specific character’s perspective and tells a small tale in the way they interact. All this culminates into an ethereal and extremely atmospheric pulp fiction (the genre, not the film) sounding album. Even the album cover gives off the same impression: a painting of a lone cowboy riding across sand dunes at night. Pretty fitting, I think. Strange Trails, their second LP, is also a loose
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