ghost on the shore lord huron guitar guitar

Ghost on the shore lord huron guitar guitar series#

The band commandeers various virtues of the Shins and the Foxes, yes, but with an undeniable voice of its own-and a very welcoming one indeed. Drummer Mark Barry fixes a tambourine above his hi-hat (a smart technique and one I’m surprised more percussionists don’t use) and tends to lean in when he’s layering beats within beats on the toms with a pair of mallets.

On slow-jams “Ghost on the Shore” and “In the Wind,” the band stretched its legs without ever noodling, the guitars urging each other up the fretboard and twining into a wail as plaintive and memorable as Schneider’s own stratospheric voice. Fellow axe men Tom Renaud and Karl Kerfoot are capable of the hard-grind sonic breakdown one expects from Wilco, but they also create upper-register textures so rich that there’s no need for organ-the band doesn’t have one. But Schneider’s band is so good that his occasionally inscrutable lyrics about the splendors of nature, etc., come off as a conscious counterpoint to the very electric propulsion of the music. Yes, the Foxy touches are undeniable: slow, incremental guitar melodies that sound like Aaron Copland lost in the forest, and soaring, reverbed vocal harmonies that belong in a cathedral. That, at any rate, was the reassuring sense I got at last night’s show. What’s so annoying about the hyper-referential haters is that they rarely consider the possibility that perhaps frontman/founder Ben Schneider is drawing not on Robin Pecknold or Jim James, but on a plenty worthy muse of his own. Pitchfork damned Lonesome Dreams, the group’s 2012 debut, with whisperingly faint praise, invoking the Foxes (and My Morning Jacket) wherever possible and rating the record a glum 5.6/10. Also, I have now basically seen Fleet Foxes #twobirds #SXSW.” What I didn’t realize then was just how bluntly the comparison had been used to bludgeon the band into spinoff status. They will visit Europe for the first time around the release of the album.I owe Lord Huron a partial apology: During the band’s grandiose, enveloping set at the Austin City Limits Moody Theater yesterday I dropped a lazy tweet: “Entrancing performance from Lord Huron at ACL Theater. Gathering momentum in the States with a fantastic live performance on ‘Tonight With Jay Leno’, hoards of praise from the likes of Filter, Fader, Rolling Stone, Entertainment Weekly and USA Today, and a recent tour across the US with sold out shows in Chicago, Philadelphia, Washington DC, Boston, LA and NYC. “A good wrestling match can solve almost anything we disagree about.” “We’ve got a pretty good working relationship,” he says. Lord Huron began as a solo endeavour in 2010 but Schneider has since enlisted some of his “best amigos” to turn his songs into a powerful live experience: Mark Barry (percussion, vocals), Miguel Briseno (bass, percussion), Brett Farkas (guitar, vocals) and Tom Renaud (guitar, vocals).

From galloping recent single ‘Time To Run’ to the gamelan groove of ‘The Man Who Lives Forever’, its charms are impossible to deny. Field recordings loop and cavernous drums echo while Schneider’s layered vocals drift airily across its surface like tumbleweeds across a dusty desert sprawl.

The result is an album as vast and easy to lose yourself in as a Sergio Leone cinescape. “I look at different media as ways to enrich the story.” “I'm interested in creating a world with its own mythology,” says the Michigan native.

Ghost on the shore lord huron guitar guitar series#

Not content with writing an album of eclectic beauty, ‘Lonesome Dreams’ also encompasses short films, intriguing artwork and a series of imagined novels by a fictional ageing wordsmith, the mysterious George Ranger Johnson. One thing that can’t be ignored with is the scale of Schneider’s ambition. “I wanted to look at my life and lives close to me as though they were tales from some frontier novel.” “Sometimes I feel like I’m living in one of those stories,” he confides. Tales of the great American outback have always been an inspiration, according to Schneider. ‘Lonesome Dreams’ is the brilliant debut album from rising pop experimentalists Lord Huron, led by Michigan-born songwriting prodigy Ben Schneider.Ī joyous collision of Appalachian percussion, rustic guitars and sumptuous harmonies lit up by lens-flare flashes of electronics, it’s a record inspired by the rust coloured canyons and characters of the Wild West, with the emphasis on wild.