REVIEW: Lord Huron - The Cosmic Selector Vol. 1

You’ve been cosmically selected to read this review

49:02 // July 18, 2025 // Mercury Records

Up until the release of 2021’s Long Lost, I liked Lord Huron’s music, but any of my analysis of the band would’ve read as a series of backhanded compliments. Ben Schneider’s brainchild threaded the needle between headliners of the pop-folk boom like The Lumineers and more ragged underground practitioners of indie folk who a (self-aware) snob like me would declare “more authentic” or perhaps just “better”, making readily accessible songs which didn’t feel wholly generic. Lord Huron’s first three albums leaned upon potentially interesting concepts, but rarely truly captivated lyrically. And while the group’s sound was right in my wheelhouse, relying on sweet, shimmering melodies built upon a satisfying blend of indie folk, country, and rock influences, the devil on my shoulder notes how ultimately derivative that very sound is - you can draw a pretty straight line from Lord Huron back to Band of Horses, in turn back to early My Morning Jacket, and from there on to a whole panoply of heartland rockers, folksters, and alt-country ramblers across multiple decades. In short, this crew’s early stuff was pretty great, but my feeling was that they essentially represented a smoothed-out version of music I’m almost assured to like, just without a ton of depth.

Lord Huron’s fourth album, the aforementioned Long Lost, blew me away for reasons that remain a bit obscure. After all, its sonic formula wasn’t dramatically different from what came before, albeit a bit more overtly country-infused, and the overarching narrative of a lovelorn musician wandering the world remained fairly surface-level. But, whatever the reason, that album hit the spot just right - it’s a beautiful record which oozes a sweeping sense of sentimentality, and has stood the test of time wonderfully.

All that leaves follow-up The Cosmic Selector Vol. 1 in a precarious position. Either it’s another huge triumph, revealing that Long Lost represented a belated leveling-up for Lord Huron into one of the true greats of the indie scene. Or it sees Lord Huron slip back into the “decent yet unspectacular” output which came before, demonstrating that Long Lost was simply an oddly amazing outlier. Choose carefully!

This latest record is, according to Schneider, based around the concept of “what if you could choose your fate like choosing a song on a jukebox?”. Pretty corny stuff, but you can sense that the idea could be awesome in the right hands, a thought accentuated by the pretty sci-fi-esque album artwork. Indeed, this record’s biggest flaw seems to be that this weird concept isn’t leaned into nearly enough. When hints of eeriness, or even a very un-Lord Huron-y edginess, creep up into these songs, the results are often magical. Take the sinister energy of “Who Laughs Last”, which pairs a spoken word feature from Kristen Stewart with a propulsive instrumental and a belting chorus and provides easily the most memorable track here, or less obvious moments like the way Schneider delivers the lines “guess I’ll just keep walkin’, towards the tombs that glow within” in “Digging Up The Past” - there’s something mysterious and even a little archaic about it. Unfortunately, though, these intriguing glimpses feel rather marginal within the album’s full package, to its detriment.

Indeed, much of The Cosmic Selector Vol. 1 feels like Lord Huron by the numbers, albeit via a style more in line with the impressive Long Lost than the early discography. There are notable highlights, like the moody “Bag of Bones” and the weepy “The Comedian”, but also significant lows, like “Watch Me Go”, which is bargain-bin catchy but has little else going for it, “Used To Know”, which feels directionless, and “Life Is Strange”, which is pretty but ultimately a rather uninspiring closer. All three of the tracks I just panned on the album’s back half, a particularly serious critique given this record’s title suggests this is only the first installment of a series. As it is, I strongly suspect Lord Huron may have been better served trimming down the best material to fit on one album.

That said, I still find the overall product on The Cosmic Selector Vol. 1 to be a step above the quality level of Lord Huron’s first three albums - the dichotomy presented in the third paragraph of this review may well have been a false choice. This album is spread a bit thin and relies too heavily on a comfortable sound which doesn’t push any boundaries, easily falling short of the standard of Long Lost, yet its reliable excellence in the first half of the tracklist, the general lush beauty of the music, and the flashes of weird yet tasteful experimentation around the edges do suggest that Lord Huron has grown as an artist. I’m just hoping for a more consistently uncanny vibe the next time around - bring on Vol. 2!

7.5/10