The Lumineers: After we sold millions of records, success hit the library [WYWIAD]

Before we get to the right questions, I make sure my interlocutor is in Turin. Earlier it had crossed my mind that perhaps we were somehow calling when he was in the States and his clock was between midnight and three in the morning. “Oh, no, maybe ten years ago such things,” laughs Fraites. – Now that I have a wife and two children, my priorities have changed.

The Lumineers and “Brightside” – an ode to friendship. “It was an experiment”

We meet a few days before the premiere of “Brightside”, the fourth album in The Lumineers discography. – I am very excited. We have the finished album about half a year before its release and we are stuck in a kind of suspension, which we make pleasant by releasing more singles, but it is known that we are waiting the most for how the listeners will react to the whole – says the multi-instrumentalist. The band’s two previous releases, “Cleopatra” and “III”, were in the form of concept albums. The former told the story of a certain love with the title Cleopatra in the lead role; the second, with great music videos, focused on a family that was greatly influenced by alcohol addiction. “Brightside” is, however, loose records of seemingly simple moments in life, which we appreciated less than two years ago. And a decent dose of hope.

– The process of creating this album was an experiment for us. I moved to Italy in September 2020 and Wes continues to live in the States. When I was still in the USA, we accumulated a lot of short recordings for the recorder. It was summer, a strange time. The pandemic was raging, it was harder to go to the test, we didn’t have the vaccine yet, so we had to be extremely careful in working together. We met in our basements and made songs.

February and May last year, when I returned to the US to record, were the worst times to travel. When I landed in New York, I was greeted by soldiers. Then one test, another test … The moment we entered the studio and we were able to take off our masks, talk, look at each other, talk about music, play together, life came back to us. I have no doubt that this is the best album we have made so far.

As Fraites says, The Lumineers’ philosophy is to deal with the most demanding composition ideas first. – On the second album, for example, “Ophelia” was such a song; here we immediately got down to “Brightside” and “AM Radio”. The only difference is that we opened ProTools earlier, recorded piano, drums, guitars, and then I mixed it up until the whole song came together. This time, I only had recordings from the dictaphone, which we recorded with Wes, playing in one room – me on the piano, he on the guitar, with scraps of text with words. And we showed such scraps to our producer, Simon Felice.

Although Fraites and Schultz entered the studio with specific skeletons of the songs, only spontaneous work gave them full shape. – The lead single, “Brightside”, has a distinctive percussion sound – I made it up while you wait. I started imitating Wes playing guitar on one of the demos. Later, he changed something at home, and this is how the album was created, as we draw from each other – remembers Fraites.

“Why assume what you play will suck?”

– I would like to tell the younger myself about it. At the beginning of the road, when you are just starting to record, you assume that you are doing trial shots first and fighting with yourself until you get to the final cut. Why assume that something you’re about to play is going to suck? – the musician wonders. – We decided not to limit ourselves this time, to try a bit and prove ourselves. I play many instruments myself in the studio; Wes, who sings and plays guitar, often has ideas for a drum line or piano, but that’s not his job … There is a really beautiful dynamics between us.

Jeremiah Fraites and Wesley Schultz met at Ramsey High – the former is three years younger than the latter, so school may not have been on their way. They caught a common language thanks to Josh, Jeremiah’s older brother, and they were connected for good by a passion for music. It was she who helped them deal with mourning Josh’s sudden death. Wes and I grew up a mile or so apart in a town of 14,000. residents. Nick Bell, our art director, left the same high school. It’s crazy that we keep working together – laughs Fraites.

Bell describes the music video for the song “AM Radio”, which was just recorded in the aforementioned high school, as “a tribute to friendship”. After listening to the whole album, I realized that this tribute is not only this clip, but a lot of songs from “Brightside”. In one of the interviews, Wesley Schultz even said that while recording the new album, he and Fraites felt again like when they were teenagers and just discovering the world of music.

– The cover that Nick came up with also alludes to this. It’s just a hand stretched out to the sky, as if through a car window. Since I live in Italy, I have a different perspective on American culture. For example, I realized how much time Americans spend in cars and how much they love those cars, explains Fraites. “I spent my teenage years in the New Jersey suburbs driving back and forth, lighting up weed and listening to music. This is how I see this hand. I remember listening to e.g. the first two Coldplay albums over and over in my old car. The music that makes me who I am.

Today I’m 35 – it took me 20 years to finally start playing as if I was 15. As you get older, you get more and more weary; when you write songs, you start reheating chops, and yet this kid is still in you. Of course, at 15 you don’t really have the ability to articulate everything that goes on in your head, but the most important thing is that joy.

Jeremiah Fraites compares the internal evolution of The Lumineers and the approach to music to the screen adaptation of Harry Potter books. – I’m a big fan of “HP”, hence the associations. In the first film, the Warner Brothers logo is shimmering blue and gold; around the middle of the series it starts to get darker, and in the last movie it turns gray, covered with rust, you can hardly see it anymore. And I think if you listen to our CDs one by one, you will hear a similar kind of evolution. We are becoming more mature, wiser, and slowly graying, you know. But it’s probably good – the artist wonders.

“FBI, if you’re listening to this – it’s not what you think …”

This year’s premiere of “Brightside” is ahead of a significant anniversary in the history of The Lumineers by several months. April will mark ten years since their debut album was released. I ask Jeremiah for the first memories that come to his mind when he thinks about that period of their activity. – I perfectly remember thinking if we ever sell 30,000. records, it will be a huge success. After the first shows, we were down to five, in gusts to nine CDs, which we burned on a laptop on the way to the club and then sold for five bucks. And then people bought three million copies of The Lumineers.

– We have great libraries in New Jersey where you could borrow CDs in addition to books. I probably shouldn’t admit it, but in high school I took ten discs home, copied them all and returned them to the library – says Fraites and quickly adds: – I was 17, I had no money for records, so … the FBI, if that you listen, it’s not what you think … Anyway: thanks to this I listened to all kinds of music, from Eminem, to Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd, to classical music. I took whatever I could.

About two or three years after the premiere of our debut, I went to my library for the first time since I don’t know when and asked: “Do you have ‘The Lumineers’?” The librarian recognized me and said: “This CD is never available. She has been on loan for weeks.” And that blew me off the board.

To further illustrate the scale of the madness surrounding The Lumineers over a decade ago, Fraites recalls that at that point they were “somewhere between appearing with Conan O’Brien, Jay Leno, David Letterman, receiving two Grammy nominations, selling millions of records” … – In between all the superficially fun things. They did, too, but that moment in the library meant so much more. I imagined a kid borrowing our album and listening to it with the same passion I had learned about music a few years before. This is one of the best memories I have left of that time.

– And would you believe right after the premiere of “The Lumineers”, that almost ten years later you will complete your solo album on the piano? – I’m asking. In just over two weeks, the year will hit the album “Piano Piano”, the title of which means not only “gently”, but also – in Italian – “step by step”. – I have a feeling that I have been working on the songs “Patience” and “April” for half my life and I was quite surprised that we managed to put them on The Lumineers albums. What ended up on “Piano Piano” was a collection of ideas that grew in my head for seven, ten, sometimes and thirteen years, says Fraites.

– I recorded everything during the Denver pandemic. I was sitting at home with my wife, 2 year old and my dog, so you can imagine it wasn’t the most quiet. This album did me good. Thanks to her, I got out of my way a bit, because I didn’t use a single idea there that I wanted to use for The Lumineers. I had to contribute to the game, which was also useful for me. I’m very proud of this album and I wish I had the chance to play it live so far. There were no conditions and there was not enough time, right after the premiere we started music for The Lumineers. I dream of such a small tour – a few small concerts in Italy or anywhere else.

“A concert in Poland? One of the best”

As a listener who appreciates The Lumineers to a large extent precisely for Jeremiah’s pianistic ideas, I sent out a warm invitation to such a concert in Poland – I am sure that a suitable place for an intimate performance could be found without much trouble. Before Fraites (maybe) will come to us solo, he will take his friend Schultz and the concert line-up in his briefcase to play on February 5 at Torwar in Warsaw. – When we were with you previously, the band The Bahamas played in front of us. It was a great experience. Dorota, the wife of our pianist Stelth (Ulveng – ed.), Comes from Poland. We met her friends and went to eat. I have no idea what the name of the soup we got then was, but it was delicious.

How did he remember the concert itself? – As one of the best, and I do not just say it – assures my interlocutor. – It was a small place, about 1,200 people came in, and we immediately caught the wind in our sails. I know that not all bands come to Poland for concerts – and they don’t know what they are missing. It was surprisingly loud, energetic, something amazing. When we play for the US audience, they don’t get much impressed anymore, so it’s nice to meet people who can create that atmosphere.

Finally, I ask what the “bright side” is for Jeremiah Fraites, according to the lyrics of the title song from the new album The Lumineers. – A space where I can do things that I did before but didn’t appreciate them. I went on a tour with the album “III” on a separate bus with my wife and son. Now we have two children, so my “bright side” is simple: a big tour with my family by my side, traveling from town to town and playing live music. It was terribly bad for us not to be able to do what is like breathing for us. Writing songs is great, recording is great thing, but in the end it’s always about meeting people. In all the previous years I was afraid of the routes – now I do not wait for anything more.