Lord Huron brings to mind the high-lonesome sound of antecedents like the Band, Neil Young, My Morning Jacket and Fleet Foxes." Lord Huron combines western, folk rock, rock and roll, pop melodies, and the surf rock genres with soundtrack and new age influences to produce a novel sound described by The Wall Street Journal as having "a decidedly cinematic flair, heavy on mood and evocative imagery. Following some solo and self-produced EPs, the group's debut album Lonesome Dreams was released in 2012 and their fourth and most recent album Long Lost was released in May 2021. The band is composed of Mark Barry (drums, percussion), Miguel Briseño (bass, keyboard, theremin), Tom Renaud (guitar) and its founder, Ben Schneider (guitar, lead singer). While it's a pleasant enough listen, the entire album falls short of the potential opulence hinted at by its best tracks.Lord Huron is an American indie rock band based in Los Angeles. Unfortunately, the album is heavier on Western atmosphere and manicured harmonies than it is inspired hooks. While Lonesome Dreams paints its sound in broad, thoughtful strokes, it's at its best when the arrangements meet up with hooks. Rarely do the two worlds meet in the middle as well as they do on "Time to Run," though mellower tracks like "Ghost on the Shore" and "In the Wind" create more space for the album's softer intricacies. Schneider's affected vocals muddy the waters some as well, taking down some of the album's plentiful bright melodies with a heavy mountain-man accent. Somewhere between the feral experimentation of freak folk, the sunny polyrhythms, and the obligatory references to rocks and trees that come with soul-searching folk-informed indie rock like this, Lord Huron either sound like brilliantly happy tropical indie rock (as on "The Man Who Lives Forever") or under-produced young country (as with the hokey title track). Being of several minds like this is the crux of Lonesome Dreams.
The song is beyond catchy and beyond happy, bounding along ecstatically between huge choruses, friendly verses, and experimental found sound breakdowns. However, as soon as the song fades out, "Time to Run" begins with watery field recordings of bells and washy synth tones before bursting into a jubilant slice of acoustic pop owing equal parts to Animal Collective's happy-go-lucky freaked sounds and Paul Simon's Afro-pop-borrowing optimism.
The searching harmonies and overblown pondering of nature don't help.
As well constructed as the song is, it follows so closely the open-ended indie folk style of Fleet Foxes, My Morning Jacket, and the like that it comes off as a pretty blatant ripoff and little else. The album opens with "Ends of the Earth," a jaunty and triumphant song filled with imagery of rivers, mountains, and arid desertscapes. The wide-open pastoral feel of the album seems designed to calm the ongoing argument happening with Schneider's songwriting sensibilities, which seem conflicted between jubilant indie pop wanderlust and stoic traditionally structured Americana. Following two low-profile EPs, Lonesome Dreams is the debut from Michigan-born/Los Angeles-based sound sculptor Ben Schneider and his band Lord Huron.
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