“Modest” is not a word to describe most frontmen, but Ben Schneider of indie four-piece Lord Huron seems to fit the bill. With the success of his sleek new record Vide Noir, Schneider is gradually adjusting to the spotlight and the uncomfortable necessity of doing interviews like this one.
“The loss of anonymity is one of my greatest fears,” Schneider says. “To be perfectly honest, I’ve shied away from doing many interviews, but I’ve been encouraged to try to be a little more open about these things. I really value my ability to keep to myself and not be bothered.
“I think that part of that fear of losing anonymity is about crossing a line where fame starts to warp you and there’s nothing you can do about it. You see that – you hear stories about people who have been famous for very long. I think there’s no way of avoiding that scrutiny and attention warping you. To be honest, it does scare the shit out of me.”
Lord Huron spent two years working on Vide Noir at Whispering Pines, the band’s LA centre of operations. The band was joined by producer David Fridmann, whose credits include albums by OK Go and Mogwai, as well as most of the Flaming Lips’ discography. The result is an album as luminous and as lonely as a cigarette butt dying on the pavement, freely mingling Lord Huron’s usual indie-folk style with garage-rock licks and flourishes of psychedelia.
“The most challenging thing for us was getting comfortable with the idea that we’re going to take time and let it gestate and let it become the thing it wants to become,” Schneider explains. “You can feel a lot of pressure to rush and put the next thing out and to keep on the road. Content, content, content is king these days. It’s more than three years since our last album came out, and that can seem like a long time to people, but I think it was worth it. We really made something special just by taking our time.”
Schneider began work on Vide Noir while reading Raymond Chandler’s 1940 pulp detective novel Farewell, My Lovely. Chandler, whose stories coined half the private-eye clichés we know today, painted with gritty yet lyrical prose a world of femmes fatales, neat whiskeys and snub-nosed Lugers.
“It’s funny living in LA,” Schneider says. “Even though it’s a long time since then, you still see the ghosts of that era. You can still find yourself rounding corners that feel like they could fit a setting from one of his books. I was reading those stories and wandering around the city, and started imagining a more updated version of that world that he describes so vividly.”
Schneider does take pleasure in sharing his creations and connecting with Lord Huron’s audience. Even so, going onstage can be a challenge, he says.
“I didn’t have the foresight, like Daft Punk had, to wear a helmet,” says Schneider wryly. “I don’t want to say I’m doing a character, but I step outside of myself a little when I’m onstage. I look at performing as just that – stepping outside of myself and into some other skin for an hour and a half a night.”
Lord Huron last toured Australia in 2016 in support of their album Strange Trails. Schneider looks forward to returning this winter, with a stop by Melbourne Recital Centre.
“Mostly we were playing small clubs, and we had a really good reception,” he says of the Strange Trails tour. “In terms of crowds and everything, it was very welcoming. The thing that blows my mind is going across the world and seeing people knowing the lyrics to our songs.”
As for what will come after Vide Noir, he isn’t ready to say.
“It goes beyond the horizon at the moment,” he says. “Although, as usual, I’m sure I’ll be writing a little bit along the way, gathering new snippets and seeing what it becomes. At some point, we’ll examine these new fragments and see if it’s starting to coalesce into a new album or, maybe, something else.”
