The long road to Cleopatra
The Lumineers are performing at Osheaga four years after Ho Hey made them a household name. Postmedia’s Lynn Saxberg talks to drummer Jeremiah Fraites about their new album:
Q Congratulations on Cleopatra, your first new album in four years. What took so long?
A The real holdup, so to speak, was all the touring we kept doing because there was the demand. We played South Africa, Europe, Australia, Japan, Canada and South America. It was a whirlwind that didn’t really stop. We had some song ideas while on the road, but to actually finish a song, it was impossible. We found we had to actually stop touring and be very strict to write this next album.
Q Your first album was a huge breakthrough, with millions sold around the world and a pair of Grammy nominations. Did you feel some pressure in following it up?
A Yeah, pressure is probably putting it lightly. The whole idea of the sophomore slump certainly was a monster in my mind at one point, then I realized instead of using all that fear-based thinking, ‘Wow, people are going to listen to this album,’ I was like, ‘Cool, people are going to listen to this album.’ I was trying to use what once scared me, and realize it’s awesome.
Q The new record seems to have a more thought-out approach. Did you have a mission with it?
A When I listen to the debut album again, it feels like a debut album. It’s pretty obvious it’s our first album, and that’s cool because it was our first album as the Lumineers. We had 10 days to record it. With this one, we had about six weeks. So that puts it into perspective that we had time to work on the sounds and really do what we wanted to do artistically and sonically. I think it shows. It just sounds different, bigger and better.
Q But not overdone. Was that important?
A Yeah, that was something we were conscious of, too. You don’t want to go into the studio and add a bunch of strings so that it sounds larger than life because you think that’s what you’re supposed to do on your second album and you don’t want to
disappoint people.
Once we got all that thinking out of our head, it was like, ‘Let’s just change the sound a little bit, but not to the point where we’re going to alienate our fans.’ It’s hard. I think if you change too much, people will crucify you, and if you stay the same, people will crucify you. So you’re like, ‘what are our options?’ I guess change a little bit, stay the same a little bit is the only option.
Q That sounds like a challenge. A Ultimately, we stopped responding to what people felt they wanted or needed from us and we realized we made the first record because we thought it sounded interesting and we liked the music. So we thought, ‘Let’s just do that and the record will follow.’ The rabbit holes of thinking you can find yourself in can be really intense, really paralyzing when you’re trying to write something. It was hard. It was a really challenging moment of my life to write this album.
Q How did you get over the hump?
A It was not easy. We’re fans of Wilco and Jeff Tweedy, the
singer, said something like, ‘Young artists have the luxury of waiting to be inspired and older artists have to get to work.’ I’m only 30, but I’m starting to see that’s true. You’re not 17 anymore where ideas just pour out of you constantly.
The older you get, the more stuff you’ve experienced. For us to finish a whirlwind international tour of six continents and then (we had to) make the decision that we need to treat this like a real job. We need to go in every day five or six days a week for many hours. It was not always easy. When you make your passion or your hobby your full-time job, it comes with this weird baggage: Music used to be the thing to escape from the world and now music has become your world so how do you escape from that?