Concert review: The Lumineers were worth the wait. But what did you think of that goofball?
If you polled fans of The Lumineers who saw the folk-rock-Americana band’s show at Spectrum Center in Charlotte on Saturday night, and asked them to pick out what they think they’ll remember most about it a few weeks from now, you’d get all sorts of answers.
Some would dwell on the wriggliest earworm in its catalog, “Ho Hey” — specifically the massive sing-along of Verse 2, with 14,000-ish belting it at lead singer Wesley Schultz’s behest. Others on the haunting climax of “My Cell,” which Schultz sang while laying flat on his back on the part of the catwalk closest to the center of the arena. Still others might point to the group seamlessly splicing a bit of The Rolling Stones’ “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” into “Leader of the Landslide,” its Dylan-esque meditation on addiction.
For me, though, the concert’s most indelible moments don’t have anything to do with a specific song; they have to do with a specific man. And that man would not be Schultz, or his Lumineers co-founder Jeremiah Fraites.
Nope. It would be that bespectacled, barefooted multi-instrumentalist Stelth Ulvang, who ...
You already know who I’m talking about, don’t you?
He’s the guy who — while the band stomped its way to the big finish of “Big Parade” — suddenly bolted from the main stage to do a lap around the triangular catwalk while clutching a tambourine, and when I say bolted, I mean SPRINTED, so fast that I was afraid when he came barreling into the last corner that he was going to take a header into the pit.
The guy who clambered up on top of his upright piano during “Leader of the Landslide” and jumped up and down on top of it before leaping off of it in a way that I was sure would shatter a bone or tear a ligament.
The guy who, as the band brought the night to a close with a rousing rendition of its anthemic “Stubborn Love,” stepped over fans in the pit (literally — his bare feet walking across shoulders and hands); charged up the stairs between Sections 104 and 105; once again appeared to come thisclose to killing himself by losing his footing and his grip as he tried to Spider-Man his way up to the Founders’ Level; then, after succeeding on the second try, walked along the edge of the tabletops up there while strumming an acoustic guitar.
Chris Farley would have been proud.
Personally, I’m torn. Yes, Ulvang made an impression on me. Yes, he’s clearly a talented musician at his core. It’s just that, kinda like Chris Farley, while Ulvang’s penchant for madcap physical comedy can be a hoot, it does sometimes seem like he’s trying just a little too hard to get people to pay attention to him.
But I know what you’re thinking now: Let’s pay some attention to the rest of the concert. Right?
This show was — as any Charlotte-based Lumineers aficionado knows — a long time coming for the Queen City. Three years and about a month ago, in August 2019, the Lumineers announced its “III” tour would make a late-May-2020 stop at PNC Music Pavilion. That tour never made it here because it was cut short due to, you know, a virus. Then during the pandemic, Schultz and Fraites had time to record a whole ’nother album (“Brightside,” released in January), which spawned a whole ’nother tour.
Fortunately for us in Charlotte, we made the list again, coming in at No. 42 of 46 cities on “The Brightside Tour.”
There are pros and cons to getting a band so close to the end of a tour. On the one hand, they’re probably having to try harder to make things feel fresh for themselves, and thereby for their fans. On the other, you’d think they’d have long since worked out the kinks.
Well, I’m happy to report that Saturday night’s spectacle was indeed basically kink-free. If The Lumineers are getting bored or burned out, they’re doing a magnificent job of faking it.
In fact, there was almost an opening-night-like energy and enthusiasm emanating from Fraitz, Ulvang and touring musicians Brandon Miller, Byron Issacs and Lauren Jacobson when they beamed smiles and beat their unplugged instruments on the catwalk as Schultz teed up the crowd for its turn on “Ho Hey.”
“I wanna hear voices now, Charlotte,” he shouted. “Sing this verse, Charlotte!”
Band: “Ho!” Crowd: “So show me family!”
Band: “Hey!” Crowd: “All the blood that I will bleed!”
Band: “Ho!” Crowd: “I don’t know where I belong!”
Band: “Hey!” Crowd: “I don’t know where I went wrong!”
Band: “Ho!” Schultz jumping back in to take over: “But I can write a song!”
“Woooo! Some big ol’ mouths, Charlotte,” Schultz said after fans kept right on singing along through the next one — “Angela,” off 2016’s “Cleopatra” album. “Thank you guys for comin’ out tonight. Wow. This is by far the biggest show we’ve ever played in Charlotte.”
(Quick side note: I’m sure he did his homework, but I did some, too, and while they’ve definitely been to Raleigh, Asheville, Cary, and Charleston, South Carolina, I could find no record of The Lumineers ever playing in Charlotte before.)
Of course, as my wife always says: “I didn’t pay to come here and listen to other people sing...”
And when Schultz got the chance to really let his voice shine, without any backing from the masses, he crushed it.
“Would you stayyyayyyyyy the niiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiIIIiiiiIIIiiiiIIIIIIIIIIIIIIiight?” Schultz crooned during “Dead Sea,” drawing the word “night” into an eight-second-long flourish of high notes that was followed by 12 seconds of thunderous adulation from the crowd, a tip of his Stetson, and then 10 seconds of falsetto-pitched “OOOOooOOOOoooooOOOoooooo”-ing.
Most of the storytelling Schultz did Saturday night was delivered via songs from the four studio albums the band has put out since 2012. But he did take breaks to give some context to a couple of The Lumineers’ more-emotive offerings.
In his introduction to “Where We Are,” he explained that it was inspired by a violent car wreck he and his then-girlfriend/now-wife Brandy were involved in near Flagstaff, Arizona years ago: “It’s a lot like the last two years for all of us, I think, in some strange way — where we’ve all been in this collective car accident together. One minute you think everything is just fine and your worst worry is what you’re gonna listen to on the radio in the next minute, and (the next you’re) wondering if you’re gonna make it out alive, and how to pick up pieces in your life and put ’em back together.
“And I can remember, this car, it was turning and it was like in slow motion just like the movies as it was rolling over and over. And you can think a hundred thoughts inside of a second. And I remember thinking over and over, ‘It’s gonna be OK. We’re gonna be alright.’”
Three songs later, Schultz shouted out his Green Beret brother-in-law and his uncle — Charles “Charlie” Schultz, who was killed during the Vietnam War — before dedicating “Charlie Boy” “to all the military families that have serviced and have sacrificed.”
Despite the heavier, more serious moments, though, there were healthy doses of levity and lightness, too.
At one point, after starting in again about the pain of the pandemic, Schultz interrupted himself by pointing out three people in the pit holding signs. I wasn’t quick enough to catch exactly what they said when they were flashed up on the screens, but one definitely had the word “pork loin” and the other included the word “Ceasar” (sic) in what was clearly a reference to the salad.
“I don’t what those signs mean, I’m sorry,” Schultz said, before someone tipped him off that the trio was from the catering company that had been feeding the band.
Fraites did a rolling riff on the drums in their honor, with Schultz adding: “I tried every one of those dishes, and they were all f------ delicious.”
The band then launched into new song “Birthday,” which they properly celebrated with an explosion of pink and light-blue confetti.
Another ceaselessly bright presence, both literally and figuratively, was Jacobson, with her mustard-gold blouse and the smile that never left her face — whether she was marching around with her violin during “Dead Sea,” banging away at the piano on “Gloria,” or mixing things up with a couple of shaker sticks for “Ho Hey.”
On multiple occasions, she leaned forward with her violin and lifted her leg high above her back in a pose suggesting she might have once been a pretty good dancer. And as The Lumineers waved goodbye at the end of their 24-song set that ran 111 minutes, Jacobson was showered with applause upon turning a nifty cartwheel on the catwalk.
But that wasn’t the show’s final kicker.
In the very end, even after Jacobson and Schultz and Fraites had receded into the darkness, Ulvang stayed behind. He folded up a piece of paper into an airplane and winged it from the main stage, and it was a good throw; but it didn’t make it into the hands of a fan, instead gliding to rest on the catwalk 30 feet away. So he bounded out to pick it up, and tried to toss it again.
This time, the plane got about 3 feet before nose-diving, hard, into the pit.
The Lumineers’ setlist
1. “BRIGHTSIDE”
2. “Cleopatra”
3. “Ho Hey”
4. “Angela”
5. “A.M. RADIO”
6. “Dead Sea”
7. “Flowers in Your Hair”
8. “WHERE WE ARE”
9. “My Cell”
10. “Slow It Down”
11. “Charlie Boy”
12. “NEVER REALLY MINE”
13. “Gloria”
14. “Sleep on the Floor”
15. “Ophelia”
16. “Big Parade”
17. “BIRTHDAY”
18. “ROLLERCOASTER”
19. “Gale Song”
20. “Leader of the Landslide” / “You Can’t Always Get What You Want”
Encore:
21. “Donna”
22. “Submarines”
23. “REMINGTON” / “(BRIGHTSIDE) REPRISE”
24. “Stubborn Love”
This story was originally published August 28, 2022 at 1:14 PM.
