Overview | The Lumineers Ship an Night on the Brightside in Santa Barbara

It will be an understatement to say that the Lumineers shined brightly on the Santa Barbara Bowl this week. They didn’t simply shine — they sparkled.

The power, pleasure, and enthusiasm they dropped at their present have been so infectious, I’d dare anybody in that viewers to attempt to not smile as band members jumped into the group, sang their manner up the very, very tippy-top of the amphitheater, ran barefoot up the rafters (and atop the piano in a single case), and actually laid their our bodies down whereas acting on an prolonged stage platform. 

All of that extroverted eagerness within the title of creating a reference to the group is hard to withstand — I actually didn’t. 

From the second founding member Jeremiah Fraites and his drum set rose up from the bottom onto a stage extension that curved into the pit, catwalk type, I used to be hooked by the power of this band, in addition to the musical mixture of alt/indie-folk, rock, and Americana. 

They didn’t maintain again on taking part in their hits on both of their two-night units in Santa Barbara. First up on Tuesday was “Cleopatra,” the title observe from their 2016 album, primarily based on an previous girl taxi driver and her tales of misplaced love. That was adopted by “Flowers in Your Hair,” from 2012, after which the music that virtually all people is aware of even when they don’t observe the Lumineers’ music: their 2012 hit “Ho Hey,” the music that put the band on the map as their first top-five single. 

It’s additionally the music the place the multi-instrumentalist, whirling dervish of a performer Stelth Ulvang chucked his sneakers off of his ft (Look, ma, no fingers!) from the catwalk stage and straight over the group into the fingers of a ready roadie. Apparently it is a “factor” that he does, and it positively will get individuals pumped. All evening lengthy, he was a lot enjoyable to observe; from taking part in the piano standing up, after which leaping up atop it and flailing his legs round, to operating up onto the stone partitions of the Bowl (nonetheless barefoot), he was at all times doing one thing to entertain us.

Lead singer and founding member Wesley Schultz can be no slouch on the subject of charismatic power. Actually, your entire band — together with Byron Isaacs on bass, guitar, and backing vocals; Brandon Miller on guitar, mandolin, and percussion; and Lauren Jacobson on strings, piano, and vocals — exudes the type of back-slapping, hand-clapping, rowdy shouting, hyped-up gusto that’s laborious to withstand. 

Regardless of the large-ish venue, there’s a bar band linked vibe to the Lumineers that positively will get the group going. We have been on our ft for many of the present, with all of our acquainted favourite songs on the playlist. These included “A.M. Radio,” “Angela,” “Gloria,” “Ophelia,” “Flapper Lady” (they positively have a penchant for ladies’s names as titles), and the 2022 music “The place We Are,” which Schultz stated was impressed by his involvement in a rollover automotive accident in Flagstaff, Arizona, and “then it turned about being remoted through the pandemic and one thing larger for lots of us.”  

Schultz expressed his appreciation to the group a number of instances all through the evening, in addition to a honest gratitude simply to have the ability to play dwell music as soon as once more. They ended the present with the previous title “Cussed Love,” a tragic however optimistic music about forgiveness and second probabilities. It was the type of evening that makes you’re feeling grateful for all of these issues and extra.