Time Shifting The Lumineers "Live" from London

Lead vocalist Wesley Schultz leads the audience in crowdsources rendition
of "Ain't Nobody's Problem But My Own" (cdn.novafm.com.au)

Saturday's Lego session with my son was accompanied by a "live" performance by the Lumineers, a dusty, roots revival group more at home in the margins of a Steinbeck novel, than a shiny London "theatre." The group found their way to London's impressive Roundhouse Art Center as a part of Apple's 30-days-of-concerts event, iTunes Festival. While not all the festivals shows are available on demand, I was able to time-shift the Lumineers at a time convenient to me and my family. By fest's end at least two concerts will have streamed live from London each day in September. The productions carry Apple's signature polish with stunning cinematography, lighting, and sound.

Drummer, Fraites, joins Schultz up front. (cdn.novafm.com.au)

The Lumineers did their part in keeping things visually interesting by mixing up the stage groupings, with duets highlighting different members of the band. Wesley Schultz welcomed his "brother" Jeremiah Fraites to the stage front for a duet and the next song replaced the drummer with the band's sole female voice, Neyla Pekarek who we learn later is celebrating a birthday shared with the day's performance. 

(cdn.novafm.com.au)

The most intersting moment? A more intimate set in an attempt to recreate the feel of the group's pre-breakout club and house shows had the band mates each on his/her own white cube right in the middle of the audience. In an intriguing bit of irony for an event put on by one of the world's biggest mobile device retailers, Schutlz took the opportunity of some set-up-necessary downtime prior to the first song in this new arrangement to admonish, "We'd encourage you put away your cell phones and be here right now and enjoy this moment." Individual holdouts unwilling to cut their once in a lifetime bootlegs short by pocketing their phones were then fingered, literally pointed out, and told, "I'm talking to you too." While full compliance remained unattained, the message was received and the rest of the show featured much less visual distraction. 

On the music end, The Lumineers kept it loose with some beautiful arrangements of both hits and deeper cuts, a couple of fun audience inclusive numbers including their breakthrough "Hey, Ho, and my personal favorite moment, a uniquely haunting cover of Bob Dylan's "Subterranean Homesick Blues." A burgeoning Dylan fan in his own right, The Lumineers' take was peppy enough to get my 5-year-old away from his Legos to perform a little jig on the living room rug. 

Cajoled back on stage for a three-song encore. Schultz continued his, I'm guessing, non-Apple approved stage patter stating, "We were lucky to sell a lot of albums this year and happy that people still bought albums and listen to the whole thing or streamed them or whatever instead of buying just one song." Interesting opinion with iTunes radios release later this week following Pandora's one-song-at-a-time model instead of the whole-album-listening Spotify model.