The Lumineers and The Circle of Life - On Automatic, Addiction, Alcoholism & the Ache of Family!

Interview

The Lumineers and ‘The Circle of Life’ – On Automatic, Addiction, Alcoholism & the Ache of Family!

What’s it been like performing in the city – Delhi?

Wesley Schultz:

It’s been mind-blowing! Hard to wrap our heads around playing in a place so far from Murray Grove.

Jeremiah Fraites:

New Jersey to New Delhi!

Wesley Schultz:

Exactly!

What’s ‘Automatic’ about? How is ‘Automatic’ different from the last albums?

The Lumineers and 'The Circle of Life' - On Automatic, Addiction, Alcoholism & the Ache of Family!

Wesley Schultz:

Big question! Just got offstage so I am a little bit… short of words. I would say a lot of it is about like a return… There is a circle you’re coming back to. The top of this circle – you start at this very innocent place. Then you go all around and you come back to where you began…

For me and Jer it was… it was an album that we really found our inner child again. We were very innocent making it. We did very few takes. It just – very like from the heart.

The album ‘III’. There is addiction, alcoholism, cycles of family pain… I want to ask is it ultimately about leaving home?

Wesley Schultz:

It’s also… it was actually about my mother-in-law – my wife’s mother passed away almost a couple of years now but her kind of impact on her family… it was a very seismic thing.

The Lumineers and 'The Circle of Life' - On Automatic, Addiction, Alcoholism & the Ache of Family!

A lot of people all over the world but especially in United States… We don’t really talk about addiction and also it’s kind of just like hidden suffering. There’s a lot of shame around it. People will not be the addict or be related to the addict. You feel scarred by that in this way. At least for my wife… I think that was like a stigma.

Part of it is like knowing yourself through that lens. Growing up with Jer… his brother’s passing. It touched his family so heavily. Mine as well…

What’s your favourite song ever?

Jeremiah Fraites:

You’re All I Got…

…

Authors: Sarthak Sharma, Treya Sinha

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