Turncoat Review - Lord Huron's 'Long Lost' album
The 21st of May marked the much-anticipated release of Lord Huron's 'Long lost', which can essentially be described as what would happen if Hozier and Marty Robbins had a love child. Two years after the release of their album 'Vide noir,' the Michigan-born band is back with a 16 track project. 'The Night We Met' and 'Ends Of the Earth' creators combine old influences of dream-like reverb with a new western ballad style influence. Every song in the first half of this tracklist sounds like it should be appointed as the intro to a Clint Eastwood gunslinger film where the outlaws lose and the cowboy rides into the sunset.
Immediately standing out is the intro tune "The moon Doesn't Mind.' This one-minute-long orientation to the album sets the tone off the bat, airy and full of nostalgia is a man singing about his lost love like a lonesome cowpoke beneath the moon. What follows is fifty-seven minutes of pure top-down convertible through the American desert imagery and short snippets of deep southern accents introducing the next song. The title track was appropriately chosen, falling in the center of the project, with intensely touching lyricism such as "leave me where the light pours down through the trees like rain" and "leave me where the moonbeams carve through the leaves like blades”.
A sly callback to their most popular tune are the words “put on the dress you wore the night we met” on the track ‘Meet Me in The City’. Sticking out the most is 'Not Dead Yet'. It combines cynical lyricism with an almost Elvis Presley-esque rock and roll vibe. The last few tracks take a turn for the sorrowful, including a 14-minute outro that serves as an extremely long lyricless send off with a combination of the albums themes in instrumental form.
The project as a whole is a very well-put-together and powerfully beautiful arrangement of desert grunge ballads and melancholy blues. Though lacking the deeply touching darkness of the group's earlier releases, it is well welcomed just in time for the summer.
