Lucius is a band about contrasts. The pouty indie rock guitar riffs contrast with the synth-washed backdrops. The mellow, crooning verses contrast with the effervescent, soaring choruses. The danceable beats contrast with the country-tinged vocals, and the vocals tie everything together by rising, potent and authoritative, above the whole ensemble.
Their second album, Good Grief, is a poppier and more energetic contrast to the indie Americana of Wildewoman, the band’s 2013 debut. What hasn’t changed is the driving choral force of the band, frontwoman duo Jess Wolfe and Holly Laessig.
Together with drummer Dan Molad and guitarists Peter Lalish and Andrew Burri, Wolfe and Laessig make music that is so much bigger and more confident than their contemporaries, not by being louder or stranger, but by having an inherent musicality that is staggering in its consistency. The band’s skill as a group of multi-instrumentalists is apparent on every song they’ve written. The likes of Arcade Fire and even previous collaborators San Fermin should be jealous of their impeccable composition.
That skill is just as apparent on Good Grief, which puts Lucius’s predisposition for high-flying vocals and simple but perfected songwriting to use on an LP that at times is bigger, at others more restrained and tender than their initial offering, but is overall kept much simpler. Valleys are deeper and peaks are higher on this turnaround follow-up to an impressive debut.
Surprisingly, lead single “Born Again Teen” holds a place as one of the songs closing out the album. I had expected such a shallow and bouncy tune to be the first or second track. Instead, the swelling, swaying “Madness” opens the LP, Wolfe and Laessig singing “Maybe I’ll drive myself to madness / Spinning in circles / Maybe I haven’t figured it out just yet.” I’d argue otherwise. The band spins around guitars that manage to sound orchestral as they’re backed by violins and cellos, but it sounds like Lucius has everything perfectly figured out. The song slowly builds to a supremely satisfying conclusion; the key change and majestic finish are the kind of music which delights in its own intention, sure of itself and reveling in its own charisma. In the very first track, the album’s entire dynamic range is teased and flaunted. Where Wildewoman was punctuated by the staccato fun of “Turn It Around” and the airy darling Americana of “Go Home” and “Wildewoman,” Good Grief is stuffed with the flamboyant wall-to-wall noise of tracks like “Madness.”
Beyond that first cracking wall is “Something About You,” a track with stronger synth bass tones than any of the band’s previous work. Lucius hasn’t lost their sickly sweet touch, exemplified by this song’s melodically twisting chorus, but the whole ensemble is shaking to a new groove that’s more excitable, evoking the upper strains of Freddie Mercury or Matt Bellamy of The Resistance-era Muse. Tastes of Purity Ring are mixed in, if Purity Ring had gospel backup singers and strode uptempo a few dozen clicks.
“What We Have (To Change)” is mysterious during its verses, but like all Lucius offerings, expands into a grand room of harmony during its choruses. The bridge features a crunching piece of rhythm guitar work that would put some Black Keys songs to shame. “My Heart Got Caught On Your Sleeve,” a tender ballad that smacks of Adele during the chorus, is understated and tender during verses. Not even these two heartbreak songs can sound small for very long when they belong to Lucius. Wolfe and Laessig’s voices alone raise the entire band to the nose-bleeding grandstands, and no song is safe from their harmonic rampage.
The semi-suite of the first four songs (followed by the Ghostbusters-esque groove of “Almost Makes Me Wish For Rain” — actually, let’s stop a moment here. Lucius is begging to fall off the deep end and become a dance pop group with this track. The synth and keyboard are teetering just along the edge. It’s like nothing they’ve done before, and they may not have done a whole lot, but it’s just such a staggering change of pace, even from the album’s initial flights, which I so sardonically called a semi-suite. I hate puns, by the way.) exemplify the aforementioned peaks, but the album does find its brooding lows. “Going Insane” often sounds like Lady Antebellum or Mumford and Sons, differentiated only by the strong drum part. The brood doesn’t last for long — our brave frontwomen never back down from a strong chorus, and it can get a bit tedious. Boredom isn’t far behind when the chorus of every track opens up into an echoing cliff of sound. “Going Insane” switches that up by breaking up that wall for once, both singers faltering and stumbling at each other as they sob, “I could be the one that’s going insane.” Halfway through the second volume of a duology defined by perfect euphonious tones, it’s a relief to hear such strain and difficulty, even if it is only a feigned breakdown.
“Truce” is a fun electronic break that mixes with the bass guitar to sound like something off of a Tame Impala record, or the funkier parts of Daft Punk’s Discovery. “Almighty Gosh” has a fun twangy guitar part like a Chinese ruan in the beginning, but pushes through to a crunchy finisher. Hats off to Peter Lalish and Andrew Burri; their part in this great theatrical suckerpunch is always spot on.
“Almighty Gosh” transitions very strangely and abruptly into “Born Again Teen.” Whether or not that’s intentional, it’s jarring. “Born Again Teen” itself is a jarring piece in Lucius’s body of work; it’s their most danceable song, their poppiest creation, but I don’t think that makes it any more enjoyable. I wish they’d gotten it out of the way at the beginning, but I wouldn’t dare de-throne “Madness” or “Something About You.” Lucius is at their best when they keep the composition simple and let their musicianship raise the song by its own virtue. “Born Again Teen” is overwrought, and thus not quite as naturally resplendent.
I don’t know whether to say that Lucius benefits from their new pop dressings, or that they should stick to the futurist folk-rock they initially espoused. It just depends on the song, really. “Born Again Teen” is fun, but seems so tinny and shallow that I’m not sure it needs to exist. “Truce” is really just filler. On the other hand, or a third hand, “Almighty Gosh” and “What We Have (To Change)” are substantiated by their raucous rhythm guitar parts, and I’m glad to see Lucius lean more towards modern rock and roll. Music nerds will pick and deliberate over the pros and cons of this smorgasbord of updated sounds, but at the end of the day Lucius is still Lucius. Their choruses still soar into the stratosphere, and they’re still better than most bands today at generating real excitement, not out of flashiness, irony, context or brashness, but out of a clean, pure sound that stands on its own merit. Good Grief may not be as immediately impressive as Lucius’s debut, but I’d argue that we’re all just getting used to a band that’ll prove to be a new mainstay.
“Dusty Trails,” the album’s closer, is a country-tinged as its title, opening simply with a sweet interplay between vocals and a single guitar. A perfect tying up of an album that often feels made up of loose ends, “Dusty Trails” is just self-aware enough to satisfy anyone who’ll miss the Lucius of Wildewoman. Wolfe and Laessig sing “We’ll be okay,” and “Dusty trails can lead you to a golden road,” looking forward to the golden road ahead for the band, a road I hope is paved with awards and accolades and lined with houses full of commoners showering the group with the praise they so deserve.
