IN REVIEW: The Lumineers - "Brightside"

 

For a band with such expansive ideas (such as 2019's III, a three part concept album about addiction), The Lumineers more often seem to get by on the bare minimum. Their signature hit, Ho Hey, is about as sparse a smash as has graced the charts over the last decade. Even the aforementioned grandiose concept album couldn't crack forty minutes without bonus tracks. So, it would seem, "less is more" is somewhat of a credo here.

Brightside, The Lumineers' fourth album, is no exception; at barely a half hour in length and with only nine songs (one of which is the title track's reprise), there isn't much meat on these bones. Still, the album's title track sets up the possibility that for once more might be more; armed with a dynamic, electric full band sound, Brightside sounds like a band refreshed and willing to go for a more expansive approach.

Given more space and time to explore their own possibilities, we might have gotten something to be excited about with this album. Unfortunately, by the song's conclusion we've pretty much heard the last of The Lumineers outside their sparse folk comfort zone; A.M. Radio takes us right back into The Lumineers' M.O. of emotive vocals and lightly plucked acoustic guitar and, though it eventually leads to a pleasant chorus and features more energy as it goes, the song remains overall another of the slow, bare bones numbers that one finds in the dictionary under Lumineers.

From there, Brightside offers a handful of pleasant ditties but precious little to get the blood pumping. Where We Are has a rolling piano lick and not much else, Birthday tries to evoke The Beatles' more whimsical moments (not, you know, Birthday) but gets lost in a soup of overdubs, trite lyrics and key changes, Never Really Mine is an electric rock song that doesn't bother rocking until its last minute, Rollercoaster is yet another piano-lead number that's content to float along with sparse instrumentation and slow tempo, Remington features a basic drum machine pattern, three-note melody and basic chorus that barely elevates it before falling away to a sparse dénouement, and then we're back at the start with the Brightside reprise.

I've left out Big Shot because I wanted to single it out for a sort of dumb, arbitrary reason that sort of holds the key to the point I'm trying to make. See, when listening to Brightside on Spotify, some tracks link to the "storyline", which offers insights into albums/songs' creation. According to the storyline for Big Shot, it was originally meant to be a fast, energetic song that the band weren't excited by until they slowed it down. The quote reads, "Sometimes you have to listen to what the song is asking for to find its true power... After a long day of frustration and confusion, this was one of the most joyful and profound moments in the studio." To be honest, Big Shot doesn't sound joyful or profound to me, it sounds like a cookie cutter Lumineers song, nearly indistinguishable from most of their past singles and most of what's on this glorified EP of an album. I'm not saying they should have kept it fast if they weren't happy with it, but if they had kept it fast at last the song would be notable for something other than its overwhelming beigeness.

This isn't the Haterade talking; I don't care that liking Cleopatra to the extent that I do makes me seem less cool. I'm disappointed in Brightside because it feels like there were ample opportunities to take chances, try for new sounds or subvert expectations and (in most cases) the band chose the safety and security of doing the same things they've always done the same way they've always done them.

January 14, 2022 • Dualtone

Highlights Brightside • Never Really Mine • Reprise