SOUNDTRACK: THE LUMINEERS-Tiny Desk Concert #966 (April 6, 2020).
When The Lumineers first came on the scene they were the band that sounded like Mumford and Sons. It now seems likely that The Lumineers are more popular than Mumford.
I’ve known them since “Hey Ho” but I’ve never seen them I guess because sinegr Wesley Schultz doesn’t look anything like I thought he would (I’m not sure what I thought, but that’s not it).
Much of The Lumineers’ Tiny Desk comes from the band’s third LP, III, which tells a story of addiction in three acts. They began with gut-wrenching renditions of “Gloria” and “Leader Of The Landslide.”
I’ve heard “Gloria” a million times, but it was nice to see it live. I especially enjoyed when violinist Lauren Jacobson joined in on the high notes of the piano while Stelth Ulvang played the low parts. Byron Isaacs plays some interesting bass lines (That I’ve never noticed before) and adds nice backing vocals.
“Leader of the Landslide” has a very sad introductory tale. Stelth Ulvang switches to accordion. It is “accompanied by a cassette recording of crickets made on iPhones and dubbed to play on a boombox.” It’s a quiet song, unlike what I think of them as playing.
The third track is also from III, but was an assignment from director M. Night Shyamalan. He tasked Schultz and his suspender-clad writing partner, Jeremiah Fraites, with composing a song for the end credits of a film. “Jer and I worked really hard on that, and then he didn’t need it,” Schultz confessed. The results are the stark and haunting “April” and “Salt And The Sea,”which strikes a different chord than any other song they’ve written.
“April (instrumental)” is a one-minute instrumental that segues into “Salt And The Sea” Drummer Jeremiah Fraites plays piano while percussionist Brandon Miller switches to drums. but he’s mostly playing cool atmospheric percussion (my new favorite thing of scraping drumsticks on cymbals).
It wouldn’t be a Lumineers show without a foot-stompin’ sing-along to end the set, which came with their crowd-pleasing hit “Stubborn Love”. Stelth Ulvang demonstrated a level of barefoot acrobatics unrivaled at the desk thus far, not an easy feat (or should I say, feet).
I never knew the name of “Stubborn Love” but I’ve certainly wanted to “Hey oh, oh oh oh) along with it. And yes, Ulvang jumps on Bob’s desk to get everyone to sing along–I hope he didn’t step on anything (and that his feet were clean).
I’ve never thought about seeing them live, but I’ll bet their show would be a lot of fun. However, since they are now playing to 20,000 people, I can probably give that a miss.
[READ: April 25, 2020] “The Bird Angle”
Nell Zink and Jonathan Franzen are intricately linked. As she writes in this essay
All I wanted when I first wrote to Jonathan Franzen–a birder who moonlights as a journalist–in 2011 was some attention for a bird-obsessed NGO. With his help I debuted as a novelist five years ago at age fifty.
Her fifth book comes out this year. She now has some money and wondered what to do with it. Franzen recommended birding in Peru.
So this is the first non-fiction piece of hers that I have read. It’s also the first piece about birds (aside from her novel the The Wallcreeper which has a bird prominently in it).
She was going to Cuzco, Peru for thee days. First she toured churches (seventeenth century Jesuits made Christ look especially gruesome). The next morning she hiked to Sacsayhuamán, an Incan ruin made of exceptionally large rocks.
She imagined Peru would feel like a hot night in New York when the A/C broke. But she only got two mosquito bites the whole time she was there (both on her ass from peeing outside). (more…)
