Guest DJ: Lord Huron On The Songs That Shaped The Cinematic 'Vide Noir'
Lord Huron's Vide Noir comes out April 20 via Whispering Pines/Republic Records. Pamela Littky/Courtesy of the artist hide caption
Lord Huron's Vide Noir comes out April 20 via Whispering Pines/Republic Records.
Pamela Littky/Courtesy of the artistI've been intrigued by the cinematic songs of Lord Huron over the past half dozen years. What began as the solo project of Ben Schneider back in 2010 is now a band selling out large music venues. What first captured my imagination were the videos Ben would make for his early songs, filmed as old western tales, for the album Lonesome Dreams in 2012 and then Strange Trails in 2015. More recently, in the odd way life imitates art, the band had one of its songs, "The Night We Met," featured on the Netflix series, 13 Reasons Why.
Vide Noir is inspired by imagery Ben Schneider would encounter during late-night drives around Los Angeles. "I started imagining Vide Noir as an epic odyssey through the city, across dimensions, and out into the cosmos," he says. "A journey along the spectrum of human experience. A search for meaning amidst the cold indifference of the universe."
On this Guest DJ edition of All Songs Considered, Ben Schneider shares music that clearly shows his interest in storytelling and film, from Bruce Springsteen's "Nebraska," to Link Wray's "Rumble." The tone of these tunes he loved growing up are an insight into the music he and his band make.
Vide Noir is out April 20 on Whispering Pines/Republic Records.
Songs Featured On This Episode
Lord Huron
"Ancient Names, Pt. I"
From 'Vide Noir'
By Lord Huron
"I generally write alone so I come to the band with a demo version of the record at some point or pieces of the record. It's still a work in progress, like, in terms of how we work. It changes every record and we're kind of all sinking into it and we're figuring out the best ways to do it." -- Lord Huron's Ben Schneider
Bruce Springsteen
"State Trooper"
From 'Nebraska'
By Bruce Springsteen
"When I found out how [this song] was recorded, it made recording seem very much within my reach. And, you know, I remember getting this similar tape machine [Springsteen] used to record that, and that was my first recording rig."
Carl Orff
"Gassenhauer"
From 'Music For Children (Schulwerk)'
By Carl Orff and Gunild Keetman
"It was actually written as an educational tune for schoolchildren — to practice intervals or something. ...I don't know if it was [director] Terrence Malick who came up with the idea of using it in that movie, but it's so perfectly placed because it's this amazing tune, amazing piece of music, but it's so childlike. And I think that spoke really well to these young people in this movie doing these terrible things. That's some pretty heavy subject matter but it's so well-balanced by this beautiful and innocent-sounding piece of music."
Lord Huron
"Wait By The River"
From 'Vide Noir'
By Lord Huron
"I conceived it as sort of a nocturnal journey through the city where you encounter these different stories along the way. And part of the way I thought about it was you wander into these different clubs that have different styles of music or different types of people inhabiting them. So there's sort of a through line in terms of the story. I think the way it begins and ends are the two ends of that person's journey, but along the way, we kind of take all these twists and turns and wander through portals to other places."
Bob Dylan
"Isis"
From 'Desire (Remastered)'
By Bob Dylan
"I was in a punk band at the time, so I don't know what my feelings were on [this song] but I definitely was drawn to the stories. Like, it was hard not to get sucked into those. I was just amazed [by] how much he could convey in a five-minute song, which might not even have a chorus. The imagery... I remember struggling through my bass lessons and just having those images stuck in my head. Plenty of verses, but just a strange bit of imagery and you've got a love story and then you've got this other story about treasure hunting."
Wu-Tang Clan
"Protect Ya Neck"
From 'Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers)'
By Wu-Tang Clan
"It wasn't like I could quite identify any real specific story. It was just more a fragmentary thing — world-building is what you call it — where these bits and pieces and fragments of this world and my imagination [were] able to kind of fill in the rest. That was sort of an important lesson to just seeing that you don't need to show everything. You can show bits and pieces and, in some ways, create something even more rich that way."
Lord Huron
"Vide Noir"
From 'Vide Noir'
By Lord Huron
"[It's] how I imagine the city sometimes. It's this thing you can get sucked into it, sort of forever lost. But maybe there's something kind of beautiful about it, too, and kind of giving yourself over to the to the void. A lot of the record deals with just kind of facing the realities of the universe and I think that's staring into the void."
King Krule
"Dum Surfer"
From 'The OOZ'
By King Krule
"We recently did a tour in Europe, and if I'm going someplace where I know that sort of occupy a certain place in my memory, I like to dig into a new record so you can listen to it clean and have it always associated with this period."