REVIEW: THE LUMINEERS - AUTOMATIC

4/5

Automatic For The People

Don't adjust your sets. The Lumineers are back. The "I belong with you, you belong with me. You're my sweetheart" folk singers return with their first album since the 'Brightside' of 2022. Live in technicolor as we all tune in. Spurred on by their one-shot video lead single, that is anything but the 'Same Old Song'. But with that being said, and the second single, of the 'You're All I Got/So Long' duality, the luminous Lumineer legacy amongst their Bon Iver and Augustine luminaries is one of a signature sound that hits the sweet spot between spiritual and anthemic. This half-hour Dualtone record, released on New Music on St. Valentine’s Day Friday, is a prism of love, live in living colour. Following their big swing, 'Live At Wrigley Field,' last year, they are carrying on like a Chicago Cub.

Dialled to eleven, with Dave Baron tapping in on production for this indie act, this amazing, accented album was recorded at the Utopia studios of Woodstock, New York for that beautiful Bohemian feeling in a rhapsody of real records. Actual albums have a home again in the first quarter-century of the new millennium. And it may only be mid-February, like the Kendrick Super Bowl in NOLA or NBA All-Star weekend in a Chef Curry Golden State, but you can already chalk this one up, as one of the better albums of 2025. Get those Grammies ready for this awesome album artwork antenna. Not bad for an album recorded in less than a month, 'A##hole'. Looking at the blurred line absurdities of the modern world, all the way to the 'So Long' closer after some short 'Sunflowers' like Van Gogh. These Lumineers are struggling to tell the difference between what's real and fake. But we know what the former is...them.

Numbing ourselves between boredom and overstimulation, like the fingering treadmills that are our smartphones, The Lumineers turn that same television that the Red Hot Chili Peppers told you to throw away, back on. This 'Automatic' album is for the people, with lyrics to go, like the television card teased words on the same social media they are waging and raging against. Yet, together, Wesley Schultz and Jeremiah Fraites write wonders for those songs in your back pocket, leafed for their own independent version of the great middle-American songbook. Stirring 'Strings' from the heart of 'Colorado', dreaming wild, like Casey Affleck and Walton Goggins playing real life brothers with a dream. This album reaches for a 'Better Day' with standouts like 'Plasticine' and 'Ativan', but in a bounty of beautiful break-up ballads to make up, it's 'Keys On The Table' you shouldn't leave, like the one(s) you let get away.

This one restores your faith in modern love gone in ways that would make Bowie ashamed with lines like, "And if you've lost the faith, boy/Leave your keys up on the table/Evеrybody knows, everybody knows/Scared you had a bad hеart/And you're sleeping in the carpark/Everybody knows you're all I got/You're all I got." But just like the album title track repeats the 'Automatic' name', another favourite, 'You're All I Got', harks back to these jangling keys. "Feelin' bored and runnin' from the shame/Livin' for the love of yesterday/Lawyer fees, stretch limousines/Pull the cord and flush it down the drain/Let the light come down on me/Let the light come down on me/You're all I got/You're all that I got." Darkened by divorce at the door, but still taking and talking love like a champ, The Lumineers show us that even in the depths of depression, the heart and soul is near. And they can shed light and remember what really means something to them, when those three little words turn into two and alimony. We need a new way in this day, especially with love, and the lovely Lumineers are trying to help show it. The rest should be automatic. TIM DAVID HARVEY.

Playlist Picks: 'Same Old Song', 'Keys On The Table', 'Sunflowers'.

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