Lord Huron, the project of LA-based singer-songwriter, and visual artist, Ben Schneider, has released his fifth album that was written and co-produced by Schneider. Rounding out Lord Huron’s band are musicians Tom Renaud, Mark Barry and Miguel Briseño, and there is also two cameos to be found on The Cosmic Selector from actress Kristen Stewart (on “Who Laughs Last”) and Blonde Redhead’s Kazu Makino (on “Fire Eternal”). Lord Huron gets into a comfortable groove on this 12-track LP that seems like the logical follow-up from the band’s excellent 2018 record of Vide Noir, paired with the crisp songwriting that was most recently found all over the 2021 effort called Long Lost. One of the key tracks that helps set the tone for the entirety of the record is found on “Nothing I Need” as Schneider croons, “I feel in deep when you fell in love with me / Now I got everything I want, and I got nothing that I need / If I believe, will you fall back in love with me? / Now I got everything I want, and I got nothing that I need.” These lyrics act as a mantra for Lord Huron as he once again explores the cosmos on The Cosmic Selector Vol. 1, an album that is rich with the themes of love, loneliness, and finding out the meaning of this thing we call life.

Lord Huron, the indie rock group from Los Angeles, have had quite a few years to grow into their trademark sound of atmospheric landscapes and wandering journeys. Vide Noir, the third studio album and their first on a major label, was mixed by Dave Fridmann (Tame Impala, The Flaming Lips) and self-produced by front-man Ben Schneider, in which he has crafted his early career masterpiece. Schneider recently credited this album to a new habit of taking nighttime drives around LA and the “search for meaning amidst the cold indifference of the universe,” according to his recent social media posts.

Straight from the album opener, “Lost in Time and Space,” we are immediately transported to a dark yet clear night landscape with subtle sounds of buzzing lights, background whispers, a harp, and eventually the folk strumming of Schneider’s acoustic guitar cuts through the soft noise. In the track, Schneider admits, “I don’t know who I am, I don’t know where I am,” and the listener is immediately pulled in to go on this journey with the band.

Read More “Lord Huron – Vide Noir”