Here’s a fun fact to blow your mind: Lord Huron’s track “The Night We Met” (from their 2015 album Strange Trails) has over 3 billion streams on Spotify. Why should that blow your mind? The planet Earth is estimated to have a little over 8 billion people living on it. That’s a lot of Lord Huron per total Earth population.
Fast forward ten years, and now we have the group's latest record: the Cosmic Selector Vol. 1. It doesn’t veer much from the pre-established Lord Huron sound. If you’ve liked what the band has done before, chances are you will enjoy this as well. Fans of Mumford and Sons, The Lumineers and The Head and the Heart should give this a listen.
The difference though is that where those bands weave a bit of joy (sometimes too much) into their work, Lord Huron, with this album, is much moodier.
The opening track, “Looking Back,” sets an introspective tone for the album. The narrator in this song is full of regrets and missed connections. Emotion is strong and the instrumentation is lush — I found it to be reminiscent of “Into Dust” by Mazzy Star. I have nothing but high praise for this opening number.
Following “Looking Back” is “Bag Of Bones,” which ups the energy and supplies a solid, catchy chorus, accompanied by harmonicas and slide guitars. The production is polished, with imagery that conjures a classic Western film, but one with some grit and rough around the edges. It would work great in the The Hateful Eight soundtrack and is another standout on the record.
After the first two tracks the album's vibe has been established, and more or less doesn’t drift from that until track five, “Who Laughs Last.”
Being blunt: This is a weird track. The song features Kristen Stewart (the actress of Twilight fame), who provides spoken word vocals. That, in and of itself, is fine and gives it a driving cadence. But the lyrics are bizarre. She's semi-muttering to herself about aliens, neon landscapes, hamburger stands, all mashed together like the incoherent mutterings of someone running paranoid from the law. I don’t know what Lord Huron was going for with this track, but it doesn’t land. The groove is strong, but not all songs can be saved by a good groove. By the time the band's vocals came in, I had lost interest.
At the end of The Cosmic Selector Vol. 1 I felt like I had just eaten a meal that didn’t quite fill me up. It tasted good and was well prepared, but I wanted a little bit more. Who knows, maybe a 'Vol. 2' will tie it all together.
