The Daily Spin II

The Lumineers | The Lumineers

Welcome back to the Daily Spin. For the uninitiated, this is the series in which I review an album every day of 2025.

As was the case two years ago, my favorite song from each album can be found at the playlist linked here.

Album: The Lumineers (2012)

Artist: The Lumineers

Link:

I’ve often thought that of all the bands that caught grief in the rage against the rise of stomp-and-holler indie folk in the later half of the 2010s, the Lumineers were among the most unjustly railed against.

I get it - ‘Ho Hey’ was everywhere in 2012 and 2013, second only to Philip Philips and his ‘Home’ track that played backing to every promotional video of the American women’s gymnasts headed to London that summer. Even after that, the sprawling fields of imitants and sound-alikes got to be a bit grating - and that’s coming from someone who loves this kinda jingle-jangle bullshit.

Yes - this album was a contributing factor to sparking an (admittedly annoying) era of music that we’re still feeling the repercussions of (my ears have not and may never forgive me for the EDM remixes of folk songs I happened upon during some of my weaker moments in college), but this self-titled work is a hell of a debut and a really strong indie folk record in so many ways.

Though it runs out of gas a bit towards the end, there’s an absolute heater of a run in the middle of the album - from ‘Submarines’ through to ‘Big Parade’, nary a miss at all, and album opener ‘Flowers in Your Hair’ is timeless in the way a lot of these gentle folksier songs can be. It’s a rare thing to find music that evokes the same emotions and feels as though nothing has changed at all - props to these folks for finding a way to the heart of it.

Rating: 8/10

Best Tracks: Submarines, Big Parade, Flowers in Your Hair

Worst Tracks: Charlie Boy