The Lumineers, Glasgow review: 'manicured roots pop'

Lumineers founders Wesley Schultz and Jeremiah Fraites are celebrating 20 years of making music together, expanding to an instrument-swapping six-piece for this arena tour. This is new-ish, expansive territory for the Denver band but they’ve brought the cool multi-coloured lighting effects to embellish their manicured roots pop and wordless singalongs so beloved of TV soundtrack compilers.

They kicked off a bumper set of around 30 songs with the double drummer action of the prophetic Same Old Song, featuring forced vocals from frontman Schultz. If his voice was a little ragged, we later found out why: his younger brother Sam had just passed away and the entire show was dedicated to him.

“You gave me something to do with all this emotion,” Schultz told the crowd as he resurrected the cover of Talking Heads’ This Must Be the Place (Naïve Melody) he played at his brother’s wedding. His band members rallied in a group hug while the crowd waved their phone lights in an act of communal compassion.

The band wasted no time in advancing to the end of their stage catwalk to connect with their people, while a slick small army of stagehands facilitated the changeovers. Flowers In Your Hair, side one track one of their debut album, demonstrated that the pop bluegrass template was always there, sterilised to sound like a US Mumford & Sons or Ed Sheeran when he’s in Radio 2 mode.

Most of the set followed a similar formula, taking in the simplistic chant of pop worksong Ho Hey and the shouty indie folk cabaret of Big Parade, with each band member taking their turn on vocals.

Schultz chambered into the audience for a walkabout to Brightside and there was a special outing for their song Scotland, with just a hint of Celtic rock flavour.

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