Love, in all its forms, tends to dominate popular music. The highs of a passionate new relationship create bombastic celebration tunes, while lost loves produce heart-wrenching ballads. Yet much of the music we hear fails to capture the sheer power of love and the intensity of the feelings it brings us. Lord Huron’s speciality is capturing such emotion.
Their latest album, Vide Noir, tells the tale of a lost soul, seeking the love who left him ages ago. Consumed by memory, he travels our world and uses drugs to ascend to another one of magic and deep, all-encompassing emotion. It is the latter world which Lord Huron hails from, each song exploring a facet of our narrator’s beautiful, perhaps mad, devotion to his love.
The best song on the album is “Wait by the River,” a sombre ballad delving into our narrator’s feelings: “If we can’t be together / I will leave this world behind / If I can’t touch your body / Can I touch the sky?”
Singer-songwriter Ben Schneider lays his emotions bare through every crescendo as he begs to the heavens; the girl means everything to him. To touch the sky is a mere consolation prize, for the world means nothing without love. His delivery strikes a chord with me, capturing the intensity of the love.
The instruments are as passionate as our narrator. The light guitar and upbeat drums in “Moonbeam” couple with Schneider’s vocals, capturing the pure joy of seeing his love again, even as a hallucination. The bass features prominently, its melodies carrying us to another plane of existence. It guides the soulful laments in “Emerald Star” and “Wait by the River,” while capturing the raw energy of a high, whether from drugs or passion, in “Vide Noir” and “Never Ever.”
It is this combination of poignant vocals and meticulous instrumentals that conveys everything perfectly, from the magic behind the world to the emotions that govern it all. Lord Huron commands the heart, drawing out our deepest feelings and letting us relive them in their songs. By the time the sorrowful guitar of “Emerald Star” crackled through my headphones, I was nearly in tears.
I implore anyone and everyone who has ever felt a deep sorrow, a great happiness, or a love that encompassed their being to give Lord Huron the attention they deserve.
