![]() ![]() His newfound fans wanted him to go on tour, and he didn’t have a band. However, soon he was faced with a far more traditional problem for a solo artist. With the blog’s promotion the songs started to get a lot of people’s attention, and in November, Scheider put out his second E.P, “Mighty”.Īs the attention around the Lord Huron project grew, Schneider decided to combine what he knew about ARG’s with his growing reputation as a musician. Those three songs would later comprise the entirety of the “Into The Sun” E.P, which he released onto the internet by June and dispersed some CD copies of the E.P into the merch stalls of some California music festivals, one of which fell into the hands of the San Francisco based music blogger Yours Truly. In 2010, he took a week off from the hustle and bustle of L.A to return to Lake Huron, and it was on those same banks that he learnt to play guitar on, that he recorded three songs that he’d been working on over the past several months. These also didn’t quite go according to plan but with the scale involved, including hiring actors, designing websites, making a small museum exhibition among many others, that’s entirely understandable. ARG’s have been put together by everyone from Nine Inch Nails to Steven Spielberg, and Schneider decided to try his hand at a couple of his own. These are interactive stories told through a number of different mediums where players have to piece the story together through interaction with other players. However, his creative side was well and truly revitalised with the discovery of Alternate Reality Games, or ARG’s. It didn’t go quite according to plan, and he ended up as the art director of a small Los Angeles advertising agency, developing ad campaigns for pizza restaurants and an online poker tournament. He studied visual arts at the University of Michigan and once his course was over, he moved to Los Angeles to pursue a career in visual arts. ![]() Born in Michigan, Schneider’s childhood was colonised by music and art, but as he grew older music became more and more of a hobby. That’s where the thrillingly modern aspect of the band comes in, and the truly astonishing thing is that it’s, by and large, all come from the mind of Schneider and very few others. That’s undeniably an image that could come from a Huckleberry Finn novel, but on the other hand, at what other time period other than now could you take a band and make an entire Alternate Reality Game to compliment the music? He learnt to play music while sat on its banks, a campfire burning gently next to him. However, this is also a band named after a lake that Ben Schneider, the main songwriter and leader of the band, grew up visiting. Their brand of rustic, atmospheric Americana is absolutely illustrative of this, as it is classic sounding music that, by now anyway, sounds absolutely natural playing alongside Lorde and their touring partners Alt-J on alternative radio stations. It is a refreshing interpretation and confirms their dynamism as live performers.Lord Huron are simultaneously a band out of time, and a band absolutely of this time. The other surprise of the night is their rendition of The Kinks’ early classic, ‘Strangers’ complete with sliding guitars and a draping bassline, playing homage to their first visit to the capital. Throughout the song Schneider steps back from the microphone to sing some of the lines and there is honesty in his delivery which leaves us with a warm, fuzzy feeling. There is certainly no disappointment displayed from the crowd though. “Hey, let’s slow it down again,” Schneider says brandishing a harmonica for ‘The Ghost On The Shore’, replacing the electric for his acoustic guitar. The calypso number which has the majority of the audience in-arms dancing didn’t make it onto the album, which – despite clearly deviating from the narrative of escape and discovery – suggests that they may have played it safe. ![]() An afro-pop song with big percussion and lighter guitars draws an obvious comparison to Paul Simon and suggests that Schneider’s influences aren’t limited to the American wilderness. ![]() ‘The Problem With Your Daughter’, however, comes straight from the leftfield and is a big step away from the mood and tempo of other songs from the album. A well-mannered bunch, the band say their thank yous before launching into album opener, ‘Ends Of The Earth’, full of multi-layered harmonies and interwoven with the common themes of travel and romance. As support Champs close to the warm applause from the bearded folk in woolly hats that make up much of tonight’s crowd, Lord Huron make their way politely through to the stage with an array of percussion, apologising profusely to anyone in their way. ![]()
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