“I think like a lot of blues music down the line, we really rely on a lot of established musical vocabulary,” says Schneider. “It’s something we take a lot of care and pride in – referencing things without repeating things. It’s amazing what you can say just by recalling an old song or an old sound; all the connotations people have with old music and all the memories that it can bring back. It’s kind of like a shorthand that you can use to say more with the song than what you’re actually saying, which I think is a really beautiful tradition within the blues lineage.”
It’s this commitment to filtering iconic sounds of the past through a distinctly contemporary lens that has won Lord Huron the praise of traditionalists and progressives alike. Their music straddles the line between old and new, familiar and strange all at once. Throughout it all however, Schneider has refused to compromise his vision in exchange for delivering a more digestible package.
“Occasionally we cause some confusion and frustration for people who like to classify things, or put things in neat little boxes,” says Schneider. “But for us, the pleasure of it is just doing what we think is right and hoping people react to it.”
Strange Trails is embedded with the power to conjure a strong sense of place. Inspired by fantastic tales and adventure, the album attempts to translate visuals into music, painting a picture with a musical palette.
“The way I think about music is very visual,” says Schneider. “When we’re rehearsing with the band we talk that way too. When we are trying to describe what we want to do in a certain part of a song we’ll talk about it in a visual way, and I think that comes through. It’s an interesting thing to do, to try and describe something sonically… it’s certainly something we’re striving for.”
While Strange Trails aims to push sonic boundaries, the lyrics are rooted in the time-honoured tradition of storytelling. Songs such as The Night We Met, The World Ender and The Yawning Grave unfurl like chapters in a novel, each with their own protagonists and a clear sense of narrative.
“Sometimes that can be a straighter line to the truth than non-fiction in a strange way,” says Schneider. “I’ve always been really drawn to that type of song, where I can immerse myself in some kind of a world – whether it’s a just a simple story or something more abstract that might not make literal sense to you, but you still feel like you can live in it and soak it up. Especially with our last record, I was really interested in writing some of those more straight forward narrative songs that have a really great history in country and rock music; tragic tales of love and loss and human experience laid bare.”
To bring these stories to life, Schneider and his bandmates holed up in a studio that they had renovated themselves. For months on end, they refined and developed a musical world of their own. In his opinion, having their own studio space is one of the key reasons why Strange Trails arrives as the group’s most fully realised release.
“We’ve had our studio now for the past year and it’s kind of become our clubhouse,” he laughs. Freed from the costs and pressures of a regular recording studio, the group were able to delve into the creative process more thoroughly. “With our own place we had more time to let the songs hatch. To figure out exactly what they wanted to be and how they wanted to be expressed, and what funky sounds would help tell the story. It was liberating to work like that.
“We had no problem spending several hours trying to get just the right maraca sound, or just the right guitar tone. You just have to get it right sometimes. You hear it in your head and you just have to hear it that way. Getting those things right, those details right, really felt like an important part of making Strange Trails.”
In a relatively short amount of time, Lord Huron has morphed from one man’s solo project to a four-way musical endeavour. Their music has connected with listeners on a multitude of different levels, and as Schneider says, that was always the aim.
“One of the craziest things I’ve noticed over our years of doing this is that different people get all kinds of different kicks out of our music. Some people who don’t love the recordings love the live show. Some people who love the live show love the recordings even more. Some people love getting lost in the stories, some people love just listening to the musical part of it. I can’t prescribe what I want people to get out of it, just as long as it’s something positive. I’ll leave it up to them.”
BY JAMES DI FABRIZIO
