AOTW 09/21/26 – The Lumineers, Self-Titled

The Medicine We Didn't Know We Needed

For most of us, music discovery can be challenging. Given the amount of platforms out there, this feels maddeningly contradictory, and yet here we are, stumbling between Bandcamp, Spotify, and places like Substack, hoping to find someone with similar taste and interests we can follow along with. And then there is someone like me, who has as close to a twin as one can possibly get — a twin who also happens to so closely share your musical interests that it’s like having an additional discovery agent out there grinding it out and reporting back.

See, my brother Patrick is only 11 months younger than me. We grew up calling ourselves Irish Twins, though I’m not sure that would be proper anymore. We shared just about everything growing up — bedroom, experiences, and most importantly, music. I joined the Marine Corps in my late teens and we parted ways, but we never stopped talking (we still chat for several hours near every Saturday morning), never stopped sharing recommendations. Without question, I call Patrick my best friend. I would argue that I’m as responsible for as many of Patrick’s favorite bands as he is mine. Thus, why did it take me so long to come to the Lumineers?

I couldn’t tell you the first time Patrick mentioned them to me, but it was long ago enough that I’m slightly embarrassed thinking about it, doubly so admitting it. I was wrapping up my assignment on the Plaskett fire along the California coast. I’d been talking to Patrick the night before, and he brought up the Denver, Colorado–based band again. This was it — this was the moment I was going to dig into them. They meant something to him, and he means everything to me — enough putting this off. So, jumping in my rig for the journey between Paso Robles and Fort Hunter Liggett, I queued them up, and as the early morning hours refused to surrender their darkness, I began understanding why he enjoyed this album so much. Sitting in the Starbucks parking lot, grabbing a cup of coffee, I popped him an image and text of the stereo screen — “Time to get familiar.”

Wesley Schultz and Jeremiah Fraites started collaborating after Fraites’ brother Josh — who was also Schultz’s best friend — died of an overdose in 2002. They began writing and performing together as a way of processing that grief. This is what you notice almost immediately upon listening to this album — a sincerity, an earnestness that rejects rock star cool and sneer for something real, something human, understated yet profound.

“Jesus, these guys are the Ted Lasso of the music world,” I thought to myself. And the more I thought about it, the truer that comparison became.

Ted Lasso landed to critics rolling their eyes at “aw shucks” earnestness in a genre that usually rewards cynicism and snark. The Lumineers landed in 2012 in the thick of the “stomp-clap-hey” folk boom (Mumford & Sons, Of Monsters and Men) and took real critical heat for being simple, even saccharine — some reviewers called “Ho Hey” borderline novelty-chant territory. Both won by refusing to be embarrassed about sincerity, and both ended up outlasting a lot of the flashier things people took more seriously at the time. They succeeded with kindness, with empathy, and with their raw, stripped-down humanity.

And much like Ted Lasso went on to become a cultural touchpoint, the Lumineers went on to blow past the initial sales estimates set at 30,000–50,000 units by their label, Dualtone. The album eventually went triple platinum with over 3 million in all-format sales, peaked at #2 on the Billboard 200, and “Stubborn Love” was reportedly on President Obama’s iPod playlist. “Ho Hey” became a cultural ubiquity — TV commercials, shows — off a lead single with famously simple, participatory, almost campfire-chant lyrics.

Barbecue sauce.

Two minutes into the track and “Dead Sea” easily became my favorite on the record. I pinged Patrick — what’s your favorite on this album? Almost instantaneously, he responded: “Slow It Down” and “Stubborn Love.” Give this record an hour, and then answer me this: what’s your new favorite track? Because there’s no way you walk away from this album without something touching you.

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