In a particularly cold and rainy stretch of October, Lord Huron’s indie folk was the only thing to get Bay Area listeners out of their bungalows and bundled up at UC Berkeley’s Greek Theatre.
Lord Huron’s Berkeley show was the band’s first stop on its last leg of tour for its newest project, The Cosmic Selector Vol. 1, coming to a hipster U.S. city near you.
Lord Huron is a modern indie rock staple, known for its folksy, reverb-steeped sound and Americana charm. The band is most recognizable from its 2015 breakout album, Strange Trails, or, more notably, that album’s closing track, “The Night we Met,” which was featured on the soundtrack for the Netflix series “13 Reasons Why.”
The Cosmic Selector Vol. 1, released this past July, is an evolution for the band, leaning into the cowboyish charm that pervades its 2022 album, Long Lost. But the lonesome desert where audiences once left a loveless Lord Huron has become an alien terrain in this latest album.
Lord Huron’s set was preceded by opener Kevin Morby, a former member of the bands The Babies and Woods. The songs Morby sang were stripped back and raw with country flair, a nice pairing to the main event’s dreamlike Western production.
The band is accompanied on tour by dancers Marin Rylee and JaVonte’ Marquez, who brought the sung stories of heartache to life on stage, as if the lyrics really needed a visual. That is to say, when the band performs, it brings a performance.
The stage was set in carved stone pathways, submersed in smoke and littered with obsolete technology among the landscape: four stacked box TVs, a phone booth, a spinning film projector and a juke box, all hauntingly static, reminding you what — and who — has been left behind.
As the house lights dimmed, the juke box, otherwise known as the cosmic selector, began to glow. Lord Huron emerged through the smoke and into the wasteland, the members dressed in their Sunday best: suits and ties for the group and a navy pinstripe number for lead singer Ben Schneider. They opened with the lead single from The Cosmic Selector Vol. 1, “Who Laughs Last.”
The upbeat track, which features a muffled monologue by actress Kristen Stewart, primed the audience — almost as much as the stage set itself. The first half of the song had the crowd listening intently to Stewart’s haunting story as she recounted supernatural events through a landline. Midway through the call, Schneider answered by singing into the receiver of the phone booth on stage.
The phone booth receiver microphone wasn’t the only prop to come alive throughout the performance. The four stacked box TVs were constantly playing intermittent archival footage and static; the “cosmic selector” jukebox lit up spontaneously with each track; and for the Long Lost tracks, the film projector glowed with the sun-lit visuals of the album.
Each album in Lord Huron’s discography has a terrain: for Lonesome Dreams, it is the ends of the earth; for Strange Trails, it is the forest; for The Cosmic Selector Vol. 1, it’s extraterrestrial. The visuals on-screen accompanying the set help to materialize this landscape. In the beginning, behind all the lights and smoke, is a full moon in a desert sky, its terrain a cross between an abandoned Arizona and Mars.
Although the set started with the band’s newest hits, it wasn’t long before Lord Huron returned to its roots: “Bag of Bones” to “Ancient Names (Part I)” to “I Lied.” As the stage pulsed with the piano, bass and steel guitar from each greatest hit, the years swelled together with nostalgia.
Everybody comes to a concert with baggage; hopefully among that baggage is a portable charger and fan-favorite songs. The joy of attending a concert, though, is leaving with new tracks to fill your purse. The standout of the night was by far “Watch Me Go.” The twangy track features almost every instrument on stage; with a quick pace and self-loathing lyrics, it’s both a culmination and reinvention of what fans love about Lord Huron.
What Lord Huron has that other indie folk artists don’t is presence. With the band on stage, the songs become more than a setlist, the performers more than disjointed instruments and voices — seeing Lord Huron live is the union of music and performance, served with style and soul.
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