Live Review: Lord Huron

In 2011 Ben Schneider's LA-out-of-Michigan indie-folk outfit, Lord Huron, were approached to have one of their songs featured in an ad for Australia's own Bonds underwear. In a country many, many miles from where Schneider was giving music a go, his song Mighty was plucked from the ether and chosen to give a woman frolicking among some clean laundry in her underwear a certain kind of wanderlust.   

Lord Huron, with two EPs under their belt, was suddenly in business. "They gave me lots of money and I got a van," Schneider explained to his crowd before launching into 2012's The Ghost On The Shore. The song, according to Schneider, was about his band's Bonds debut: "Every eye on the coast ever more/Will remember the sight of the ghost on the shore."  

Five years later and two LPs behind him, this is the now five-piece outfit's first visit to the country whose undies gave them a career. "It's real nice here. God honest truth," Schneider told the crowd in his American drawl.

The five of them (plus theremin) may have looked cramped on OAF's stage but they didn't sound it. Wasting no time they started with the three opening tracks from 2015's Strange Trails and, by the end of Love Like Ghosts, it was clear that they had brought all of their sound's bigness with them on tour. Schneider may be centrestage, and nominally the one and only lord of the lake (Huron is a lake in Michigan), but Lord Huron's plucky, textured and harmony-driven music would be lost without the rest of the band. Their set was tight — vital for an outfit who base their sound in tricky rhythm arrangements.

Miguel Briseño on bass/keys deserved particular praise for his theremin part on Way Out There. The theremin only had only one part to play in the entire set but Briseño, betrayed by what could only be called a "pained expression" on his face, made sure to do it justice.