Lord Huron eases into the world of music label producing with their third album 

. “Vide Noir” is French for Black Void, which says a lot of an album that chooses to discuss hard-hitting and stimulating universal and cosmic themes. Lord Huron combines clean musical talent, synergy, and variety to flush out interesting ideas of self-identity with internal monologues that appear to be fueled by love and loss. The 12 tracks of 

 all could be travel songs. They have with long, smooth and consistent phases to songs that make it seem like all the listeners are taken on a ride of love, wandering, learning, and forgiveness.

The listener’s journey starts with ‘Lost in Time and Space,’ as the first sounds of the album slowly ease into focus. Soft and subtle strings pull the listener down into the black void and the audience experiences the despair that occupies the album for the first time. “Drowning in a sea of stars/Lost in a galaxy of cocktail bars,” our subject is distraught at a lost lover. “She took my money but she didn’t take me” and other anecdotes of sorrow display a conflicted theme in this rhythmically rocking foundation for this album.

Quick to show their versatility in style and composition, Lord Huron embraces a faster and punkier style beat for ‘Never Ever,’ yet is filled with frustration over a lost, sublime lover and their accompanied euphoria (a theme that remains for long sections of the album). The song’s only chorus bursts through with power emotion at the end of the song past its first three verses. This passion perseveres to the next section of the album in both parts of the next song, ‘Ancient Names’.

‘Ancient Names’ I and II follow a guru analyzing our subject’s life with depressing results, as the former depicts a fortune teller dispelling bad news for the protagonist. Coupled with a fast beat and steady base, guitar solos of different speeds and tones riddle the track until it descends into a low toned simmer. The simmer holds until the second part, when the band breaks out into their grungiest part of the album. They spout statements of refutation like, “I scream and shout like this/Just to prove to the world that I still exist.” In just a couple songs, 

 shows Lord Huron can jump around and tickle many facets of our musical minds.

After the previous tracks, the album takes a sharp turn with a slower song, ‘Wait by the River,’ which follows a rather persistent person who is prepared to endure a fate of unforgiveness and hopelessness even for a small chance at redemption. The song is a slow burner like a waltz but still filled with character, making for a soothing and nice change of pace.

Next up is ‘Secret of Life,’ a song that intensifies throughout its play. It surrounds the predicament of our narrator learning the secret of life, only to have it be taken away, leaving him to chase the high that they so fondly remembered as the peak of life. The track oscillates through these contemplative lyrics with a mesmerizing and psychedelic background and an upbeat tempo. It’s a musically full song, bringing a sense of comfort as the waved background vocals flood this song and has your neurons firing on all cylinders.

After ‘Secret of Life’” we are graced with ‘Back from The Edge’ a song I imagine listening to during a break of some long trek across a vast wilderness. Tired from my trekking across some unyielding terrain I sit down and unstrap my boots and support myself on nearby log and let the unwavering base and scenic guitar whisk me away into a slumber.

‘The Balancers Eye’ is one song with some supposed lore behind it, carrying messages and myths that the band members created themselves and connecting with previous albums’ lyrics. Aside from that, there’s nothing particularly special in the track, as it shifts from one catchy, burst of musical cluster to the next. By now, in the album Lord Huron appears to have solidified the sound they were going for, so at this point in the album, my ears felt like they were hearing different versions of the same thing. Unfortunately, this experience continues to ‘When the Night is Over’ whose first note instantly reminded me of ‘Wait by the River.’ Another slow pulse, ‘When the Night is Over,’ creeps across themes of blues, sorrow, and hopefulness. “Shadows drifting in the rain/Slowly driving me insane,” this lesson of lost love is just paralleled by a deep canyon, cowboy base-fueled rhythm and some lonesome whistling.

Lord Huron shifts themes from loss and contemplation to dreams on ‘Moonbeam,’ which transports listeners to a cloud made of dopamine. The pre-chorus explains: “When you saved me from a bad dream / I was drifting through time and space / But I landed on a moonbeam.” This song ushers in a sense of safety, like we are just along for the ride, sharing our narrator’s joy. Throughout the song, the “woos” from the background give an uplifting feeling to this song, and the rising scale as the focus point in the conclusion of the chorus produces further feelings of joy.

The last two songs explore the themes, feelings, and self-destruction that accompanies them into a “pure black void.” While the first of the two is blatant about its messages, ‘Emerald Star’ helps facilitate a bittersweet ending to the album. The last song follows the predicament of our longing lover finally reaching his goal: his previous partner. Instead of a loving embrace and a happily ever after, they are cast away, being told he was never loved and his steadfastness is futile. Like a shot through the heart, Lord Huron finally comes to a rather rough, but powerful resting place. The ending to the album itself gives good indicator to the magnitude of the album’s theme that the band wanted portrayed.

 is soothing and clean, and its songs are psychedelic and smooth, and while its pace is predictable, the final product is still refreshing. Although the songs don’t make you want to jump out of your seat, they will service you by being a good mediator between intense themes of longing, love, and the acceptance of bittersweet realities.

Lord Huron releases full-length ‘Vide Noir’

Music that comes from a dark place can still resonate. With the new release of 

, of Montreal front man Kevin Barnes does not shy away from his internal anguish and anxiety. There are 42 minutes of deep seated, ruminating mental conflicts and frustration spread across six tracks. Each one solidifying of Montreal’s reputation for an evolving sound.

As opposed to earlier albums, of Montreal’s 15th official release was not recorded by the band in its entirety. Lead front man and primary creator, Kevin Barnes, outsourced compositions and recordings and compiled the album alone. The final product of this synthesis is a synth-pop album, shadowed by funk and rock melodies, and encompassed by darker themes and tones. Each track is broken up into two titles that show the duality of each song. Just looking at the track list made me anxious and uneasy. That feeling stayed with me through my first playthrough… and the second. Quite honestly, it took several plays to get rid of the feeling. After listening to the first song, I realized that this EP was entirely unconventional.

Kevin Barnes has no respect for what you may think a traditional song is. First off, we are given a five-and-a-half-minute song with two parts. The first half communicates a theme of self-caused blights in his love life. There are lyrics like “It’s hard to stop the triggering of one’s self-destructive urges,” and choruses that sound like a robot annunciating each syllable through the voice box of a moody teenager. His voice carries a nasally, matter-of-fact tone that can be observed consistently throughout the album. The second phase is the emotional drop of the song that is triggered by the sudden influx of soothing, high harmony notes followed by a keyboard solo. The sudden shift in this track, like all the others, abolishes the natural construction of the expected outline of a pop, rock, or indie song. Not that any way of making art is bad, per say, but it certainly wasn’t appealing on the first listen through.

The first time I listened to this album I felt like my brain was being picked in all the wrong places. The lyrics in the songs felt forced. Lyrically, Barnes’ linguistic detail was confounding. For example, he fills “Plateau Phase / No Career in Corruption,” a heavy base song that deals with societal paranoia and anxieties, with lines like: “Of pejorative outreach outlaws,” and “and transgenic operatives,” and “Acyanoblepsia.” Listeners have to juggle both the peculiar words and an even more peculiar interpretation of these words. Each EP should come with a dictionary and a thesaurus. In terms of pacing, when I expected there to be a lull for instrumental music, Barnes’ vocals would come staggering in. In “Soft Music / Juno Portraits of a Jovian Sky,” it almost sounds like Barnes interrupted himself at the end of the first chorus. It was extremely cringeworthy. It kind of felt like I was slapped across the face with a paddle that left an outline of ‘Ha, you thought’ in inflamed, irritated red. The distractions and hiccups were abundant and were the main cause of my dissatisfaction throughout the EP. I couldn’t get into a groove while listening to this EP, even though this was compiled of what was supposed to be ONLY grooves.

The smoothest, grooviest track was the eight-minute-long “If You Talk to Symbol / Hostility Voyeur.” The finale of the EP, this song demonstrates of Montreal’s talent with a diverse, intense track. An engaging initial melody is followed by bursts of the most passionate vocals Barnes has on the album, and then later followed by a catchy, urban funk tune that slowly diminishes out through some soulful jazz. This track demonstrates the skill that is embedded in this album, behind all the jank. Barnes, throughout the entire album, undeniably owns the low-fi, dark-web 80s get-up that he created for this EP. He mixes in a wide range of notes used for emphasis while still incorporating multiple styles of music. His synthesized melodies and the phasing he does in the background of every song is amplified with each listen. While the final creation is undeniably detailed and intricate, it is also jarring and ugly. The lack of cohesion found in this EP is what will isolate its unique sound from a larger audience looking for more order and consistency.

David Spinrad