Illuminating the darkness
How the sense of optimism on the Lumineers’ new album came from keeping it spontaneous and unfussy
When the Lumineers frontman Wesley Schultz began piecing together the early demos for what would eventually become the group’s latest album, “Brightside,” he did not imagine the resulting work would, could even, be so perplexingly positive.
Yet, speaking over the phone from his Denver home, Schultz recalls finding himself unable to shake a sense of buoyancy. Despite, or perhaps in spite of, everything taking place around him, he said, when it came time to start singing, what came out was “a sense of hope.”
“My optimism found a way through (the pandemic),” he said, “like a weed coming up through the concrete.”
As a result, “Brightside,” released Friday in the midst of another COVID-19 wave, acts as a balm for the weary soul.
Bathed in the Americana well frequented by Bruce Springsteen and Neil Young, tracks such as “Never Really Mine,” “Where We Are” and the titular “Brightside” offer a sense of gratitude for the act of being, even whist buried in the muck of living.
For Schultz, “Brightside” unwittingly ended up becoming a manifesto of sorts; an understanding as a way to be.
“My dad died at 57 and I think a lot of that had to do with how much stress he really took in,” he said. “He was a psychologist and maybe it was (the toll of ) helping other people and taking on their burden, or maybe it was just how he is wired, but I just think a lot of his pain came from being scared to hope. And it kind of destroyed him.
“It’s like,” he said — pausing to consider his wording — “what’s the point of feeling alive if you can’t feel wonderness and you can’t want joy?”
In exploring this evocation, Schultz said it reflected the ideology behind the group’s fourth album. In conceptualizing how to follow up 2019’s addiction-themed concept record “III,” the duo — Schultz and drummer/pianist Jeremiah Fraites — alongside producer Simone Felice decided to try to keep things spontaneous and unfussy in the hopes of capturing a “vibe” rather than the tightly wound conceptions of the group’s previous albums.
Initially, the intent was to loosen up the group in the hopes of avoiding a creative slump.
“I think it happens in some bands: you can make enough records and stop caring quite as much,” Schultz said. “So we started letting go and having a little bit of faith that it’s going to work out and not being like, if I don’t squeeze this as tight as I can it’s going to be an awful failure.”
For Schultz in particular, that meant abandoning the dense lyricism that’s driven the group’s previous two albums, creating what he calls an “economy” of melody: “saying more with less.”
“More stream of consciousness, like a Rorschach test,” he said. “You’re almost like an animal making a sound that sounds correct; it’s like listening to (indie folk band) Bon Iver where you don’t always know what he’s saying but you’re connecting with that feeling.”
Musically, the group tried to likewise pare down the instrumentation, offering a simplicity of craft that evokes their debut — which, it’s worth noting, contains their biggest hit to date, the folk-pop phenomenon, “Ho Hey” — but bigger, shinier and more patient.
“More cocky,” laughed Schultz. “What you’re hearing is a sense of freedom. When we (became successful) that came with a degree of survivor’s guilt. So when we started recording, Simone put up a picture of Oasis at Knebworth and under it was the word ‘Free,’ the idea being that we can be popular but also feel confident in our choices.”
For the Lumineers, this meant using the first or second take rather than the 100th. “This whole album is like home recordings with really nice mics,” he laughed. “It was fun because we didn’t really know where we were going. It’s like going on a new hike: you don’t know all the signposts, you don’t know all the landmarks, so when you’re going through it time seems to slow down and also speed up at the same time — it does something to that creative muscle that you get something different out of yourself. It gave us something new to express. It was like we were kids in the garage.”
That it happened to take place while the world was in lockdown, Schultz said, only amplified that sense of hope and wonderment. That need to not be dragged down by your anxiety, as he had seen happen to his father.
“You always want to learn from your parents,” he said. “I think my dad would be happy to know that I was (being hopeful).”