NEWS
EVENTS
The Lumineers @ Brixton Academy
Indie | Thursday 14th March 2013 | Becca
The Lumineers @ Brixton were great, if you were in your mid-30s and thought you were hip from downloading their album off’ the back of an advert.
Langhorne Slim, the support for the night, were miles better than the head line act. You can tell these guys have been around for longer, they know what they’re doing. Compared to The Lumineer’s disjointed attempt. When you’ve only released one album, and been famous for a short space of time, you need to deliver a strong show, to showcase that you can solidly perform the album that you’ve become so famous from, live.
So they can play their instruments, and put on a crowd-pleasing performance, full of catchy songs. However when you look a little closer, you can see that all their performances really are, just chanting, playing quietly, then playing loudly (which is when the crowd will sit up and listen).
The problem is, the crowd are waiting for those big bursts of up-tempo melodies, to even seem like they’re enjoying the performance. Whenever the band erupt into a slow-tempo song, the crowd stand there bored. Then start to take part in one of my biggest pet peeves at a gig; talking so loud, you can almost hear that over the live performers.
So when those big moments came during The Lumineer’s set, the crowd’s reaction was overwhelming. The whole time I found it incredible that a band who have only been in the mainstream limelight for the past 6 months, and have only released one album so far, have gained a following this big, and a crowd this blissfully excited to see them. I was more bowled over by this, than The Lumineer’s performance.
The saddest part of the show was, when The Lumineers played a Bob Dylan cover, and it was depressing for two reasons. Firstly, the band clearly had to play a cover to 'pad out' their performance as they did not have enough material to fill a lengthy show. This was also proven when the band played a brand new 'untitled' song. Secondly, it was depressing as the crowd did not react in the way they should have, to probably the most well written song played on the night. Instead everyone stood there, disinterested, and used it as a break to pop to the loos and grab a couple more over-priced beers.
One of the reasons this band have gained such a huge following, is because this genre of music is not as saturated as others. The only other band that had ever made it this big at this stage, are Mumford & Sons. So The Lumineers have been very lucky, as the people who listen to this kind of music have yearned for another band like Mumford to cling on to, and now
they've got one.
I would go and see them again, once they've had a couple more albums out and have grown into the 'big band' this crowd is viewing them as. Maybe.
Becca @beccatogwell
