Lord Huron Takes the Cosmic Selector on the Road at a Perfect Summer Night at Westville Music Bowl
Some shows you just attend. But shows you fully experience. Thursday night at Westville Music Bowl in New Haven for Lord Huron was the latter.
This was my first time at the venue, and it immediately earned a place on the short list of great outdoor spaces in the Northeast. An open air amphitheatre with food trucks, cold drinks, and a residential neighborhood backdrop, it carries the same summer energy as Tanglewood or SPAC. Early in the summer season, with the weather cooperating and the crowd settled in on the fake grass and the stands, it was hard to imagine a better setting for what followed.
Thao opened the evening, and catching her here just days after her set at Green River Festival in Greenfield felt like a pleasant coincidence that kept getting better. Her sound doesn’t easily fit into any categorization. It’s folk, country, rock, and hip hop woven together into something genuinely her own, and she brought the same energy to Westville that made her Green River set one of that weekend's highlights. Seeing her name on a Lord Huron bill was a surprise, and seeing her play confirmed she belonged there.
Lord Huron's current tour is built around The Cosmic Selector Vol. 1, a conceptual album centered on a jukebox that can transport its characters to alternate timelines and universes based on the small decisions that alter the trajectory of a life. Frontman Ben Schneider describes the controls as busted. Everything mislabeled, every selection potentially sending you somewhere you didn't intend. “Everything's on the menu," he's said of the concept. “Sorrow, joy, horror, love. All the ways a life can go."
The stage design made the world tangible. A giant jukebox anchored the setup, flanked by a payphone that Schneider returned to throughout the night, screaming lyrics into the receiver, dancing with it, treating it like a co-star. A large LED screen cycled through scenery that shifted with the music, turning the whole show into a road trip through the cosmic unknown rather than a conventional concert. Schneider didn't stop much between songs, treating the evening as a continuous experience rather than a collection of separate moments. Late in the set he took a moment to make the case for listening to albums front to back. On streaming, on CD, on vinyl, which he called his favorite for “the scratchy sounds," or even on VHS, which he offered with a grin as an option “if you're kinky."
The set opened on “Who Laughs Last," which on the album features Kristen Stewart in a spoken word role, and set the psychedelic folk tone immediately. The show moved through deep catalog cuts and newer material with equal attention. “Meet Me in the Woods" arrived near the end of the main set and did what it always does, which is to say it stopped the room.
Westville sits in a residential neighborhood with a 10pm curfew, which might have forced some hard choices. The band paid for an extra thirty minutes rather than cut anything short, which sent a clear message about how they feel about the show they want to give. The encore of “The World Ender," “Not Dead Yet," and “It All Comes Back" closed the night as the summer air settled in around a crowd that showed no interest in leaving.
I'll admit a bias. Lord Huron is one of my favorite artists, and Thursday night confirmed why. Some shows remind you what live music is for. This was one of them.
LORD HURON SETLIST:
Who Laughs Last
Looking Back
Bag of Bones
Ends of the Earth
The Ghost on the Shore
Wait by the River
Secret of Life
Used to Know
Ancient Names, Pt. I
Long Lost
Twenty Long Years
Watch Me Go
I Lied
La Belle Fleur Sauvage
Frozen Pines (Alive From the Whispering Pines version)
Meet Me in the Woods
The Night We Met
Encore:
The World Ender
Not Dead Yet
It All Comes Back
