Music Critic Poppy Turner delves into Lord Huron’s sophomore album Strange Trails, explaining why it is an essential album
Unfortunately, I have never had the opportunity to visit rural America, but Lord Huron’s sophomore album, Strange Trails, has made me homesick for a place I have never been. Each song is as acoustic and as cathartic as the next and comes together to form a beautiful anthology of songs.
The band have chosen to make the album a type of embedded narrative, a story within a story, by creating fictional singers and bands to tell their tales. It is far from being an elucidated or happy album, but each track of love, loss, and the life cycle creates the effect of a haunting dreamland.
Each track of love, loss, and the life cycle creates the effect of a haunting dreamland
The first track of the album, ‘Love Like Ghosts,’ fully embodies the beauty and danger of unrequited love. On top of its serene instrumentals are some deceptively toxic lyrics such as ‘if I can’t have you then no one ever will.’ Lord Huron has reused the same musical structure in ‘Love Like Ghosts,’ ‘Meet Me In The Woods,’ and ‘The Night We Met’ which conjures up these strange feelings of deja-vu as you progress through the tracks.
The transition between the bittersweet ‘Love Like Ghosts’ and ‘Until the Night Turns’ may seem like a jarring one, but it does help to shake off the darkness that the previous track settles the listener into. ‘What if the world dies with the sunrise?/ Baby it’s alright we’ll be up all night’ is a hopeful spark in the face of inevitable finality and its fast tempo makes it easy to forget this song is about the end of the world.
Spread through the album, ‘La Belle Fleur Sauvage,’ ‘Fool For Love,’ ‘Cursed’ and ‘Louisa’ are all songs revolving around love, varying between hopeful and destructive. The former two songs, both in F key, are placed next to each other on the album. They smoothly transition from one song to the next despite their opposing lyrics of falling in love and on the precipice of falling out of it.
‘The Yawning Grave’ is my personal favourite song of the album. Many of Lord Huron’s songs are about death, but this song was composed on behalf of it and is a sung warning to someone who did not listen. The omnipotent lyrics only add to the mystery of what the ‘Yawning Grave’ is and Reddit users have provided a great deal of morbid theories. This song and ‘Way Out There’ are also the only two tracks to not be attributed to a fictional artist and they are certainly the two most ethereal sounding in the album, centring around nature rather than specific characters.
The album is completed with ‘The Night We Met,’ Lord Huron’s most popular song and it is well-deserved. The lyrics ‘I had all and then most of you/ Some and now none of you’ are achingly simple, but nothing short of heart-breaking. If you have ever struggled to recall the face of a lost loved one, then these lyrics might resonate, and it is a powerful note to leave such an emotional album on.
It is these little easter eggs that make the album a masterpiece
After perusing the album several times, as well as the music videos, the listener might discover some intricate details. For example, the woman who is the centre of the ‘The Night We Met’ happens to be called Louisa, the name of the prior track. ‘Until the Night Turns’ alludes to ‘The World Ender,’ another song on the album. It is these little easter eggs that make the album a masterpiece, yet still leave more to reflect on. Unfortunately, limiting this album to one article makes it impossible to even scratch the surface of the intricate lore that Lord Huron have composed. However, if you are interested in exploring the band beyond their amazing music, the music videos, the Strange Trails comic book, and Reddit are great places to help you unpack the band’s world. Additionally, their other EPs and albums, including their most recent, Long Lost, are crammed full of reoccurring characters and places that help to tie together the discography.
Strange Trails has always been about escapism for me. In each song Lord Huron adopts an allusive character in a mythical situation that has left fans conspiring and theorising only to never be satisfied with a bona fide answer. It is a reminder that music, much like life, should not have a definite answer; instead it is all about the immersion and the enjoyment. This makes it nothing but an essential album in my mind.
You Might Also Like:
Comments