After previous success, a brand-new album and a quickly selling out tour, things are looking good for American folk-rock band The Lumineers.
The Lumineers’ new album Cleopatra is about as perfect an album as you can find. It emits life, and all that is wondrous about being alive. Mixing in songs from Cleopatra among the old brought some new life and passion to the band, which has been touring on the vigor of their first album for close to four years now.
One new song The Lumineers recorded and that stood out to me is the title track from Cleopatra. The song narrates a devastating love story about a woman from the Republic of Georgia who found the love of her life. When he proposed, she was so shocked that she couldn’t answer. Eventually, the man left, brokenhearted and leaving only his muddy shoe prints behind. The woman refused to wash the mud off the carpet because it represented the great love that she lost.
Cleopatra is an exercise in dynamics. Some songs are full-blown snoozers with tedious keyboard melodies and zero peaks (In the Light), yet others build into extensive pandemonium, using the piano to stimulate frantic trills and escalating choruses, like on the album’s first single Ophelia. Ophelia is a memorable piano score that complements the emotional vocals.
The authentic lyrics of the seventh track, Gale Song, are bound to catch all emotions of the listener, and stick with them through the building of drum beats and strengthening of apprehensive vocals. The same feelings continue toward the end of the album with My Eyes.
The band starts their tour April 14 in the United Kingdom, then plays venues worldwide from Paris to Denmark. I’m predicting Cleopatra will be embraced just as fully by fans as Lumineers’ last album was.
