REVIEW: THE LUMINEERS - BRIGHTSIDE

4/5

Mr. Brightside. 

Luminaries of The Lumineers like Mumford and Sons and Vampire Weekend had their time around the early 2010's like Strokes and Stripes did a decade earlier. And what a time it was. A time to be alive. And one that still resonates in the reverie of a reminder to this day. These new age folk of acoustic meets electric, patient but not with haste bands from beautiful corners of their own worlds embraced us with a sound that was like a warm hug. Or an arm on our shoulder that reassured us that everything was going to be alright. And boy how we need that now in these days of our planets pandemic, crippled by coronavirus and a pre-COVID-19 social distance we already had from each other in mistrust. Now when we extend a hand, it's palm is held out in defence. It's getting harder to breathe now like the air of the Mile High City of Denver, Colorado where this band comes from. But despite losing more members than The Killers, The Lumineers are still alive with 'Brightside' looking for that very notion of their new nine track album whose artwork reaches for the sun with an outstretched hand. Soundtracking out solace, 'Brightside' opens with the self-titled opening single that is legendary Lumineers like 'Cleopatra', or singer and guitarist Wesley Schultz and percussion and piano player Jeremiah Fraites working together like they always have since their inception in Ramsey, New Jersey. Singing for the same Americana Springsteen, Dylan and Tom Petty did in heartbreak. "I can see it in the air/Every word was like a smoke from a cigarette/You were blowin' in your hands/The heater broke in the Oldsmobile/And the light in your eyes/Alone on the freeway." Alone on the freeway, this one will take you away, like smoke from an ashtray blowin' in the wind. 

My friend, this is the answer. One to wake you up from the dispondence of 2020 that has lasted two years into this new calendar. An alarm like the 'A.M. Radio' of the second track and latest single to tune into like an Abel 'Dawn FM' last Weeknd. Coming in the morning on this 'Groundhog Day' radio as the digits turn in a flap with lyrics like, "Standin’ on the corner, I could listen to the radio/When the savior sang from the fire escape on the second floor/You were always sayin’ we would make it to the catacombs/In the end, it came when you wrote my name on the bathroom stall." Dreams of Paris stalled and scattered on the bathroom floor like a lost number from a bag of tricks spilled in a stupor. 'Where We Are' is somewhere on a highway that's no longer lonely when we sing along in karaoke. And on the track 'Birthday' for your special day, The Lumineers give us the best birth song since the 'Birthday Girl' dedication by The Roots and Patrick Stump of Fall Out Boy, or an ode from Murakami's short 'Birthday Stories' for your prose. "It's alright, it's alright, it's alright/It's your birthday, dear (Alright)/It's alright, it's okay, and wе will carry on/And you know, and you know, and you know/It's your birthday (Ooh-oh)/Every word, every word/And we will sing it along." You've just found your new anniversary anthem for another trip around the sun like the wonder of Stevie singing for Martin Luther. 

Mr. 'Big Shot' this all comes together in luminous beauty for a band and their second single who has scored many a soundtrack with their goal to be the harmonies in everyone's heads and the lyrics on all our lips. But it's the breakup ballad of 'Never Really Mine' that really stays with you like the one that got away. "Love was not designed for child/You were never really mine/Love was not designеd for child/You were nevеr really mine", Schultz yearns like "you're a woman on the run, I'm the silence on the staircase." "All alone at the traffic stop light", begging "don't you fade, don't you fade away" until those very words do that very thing on the tracks out. It's just part of love's 'Rollercoaster' like the Chili's once covered, animatedly like a bunch of Buttheads. Now in this post-MTV generation, it's the Lumineers legacy that engineers evocative words to the muse such as, "I wish I could sail away/And find another island/I wish we could start it over/Have another child." "Sittin' on a rollercoaster/Holdin' on for dear life." You know those YouTube videos of 'House Of Gucci' star Lady Gaga riding a rollercoaster (basically her iconic 'Star Is Born' "haaa, oooh's" over a first person video view of a ride) or Billy Corgan of The Smashing Pumpkins doing the loop-de-loop ('1979' babies, you need to search for this one)? These earworms will stay in your mind in kind. All the way to the already familiar 'Reprise' of 'Brightside' on this album shining the same in closing to a half hour of eight wonders. After the Springsteen storytelling of 'Remington' that could find itself somewhere in Atlantic City. "I awoke from the sleep of a hundred days/To the fire station bells/And the smell of the smoke brought me back in time/When my father killed the cold", Wesley says in woe. This low cuts like the cold steel of a sharp razor this winter. But still in reflection on the shimmer, they still bring the light. Even in these times, the new album from The Lumineers reminds us in all caps to always look on the 'Brightside' of life. TIM DAVID HARVEY.

Playlist Picks: 'Brightside', 'Birthday', 'A.M. Radio'.