The Lumineers’ fifth studio album, “Automatic,” which released on Friday, indicates a maturation of the band’s emotional depth that has been acquired since its 2012 self-titled debut album, “The Lumineers.”
Drawing influence from Bruce Springsteen’s “Nebraska” and the Beatles’ “Get Back” documentary, the group recorded the 2025 album in Woodstock, New York, with group members looking to replicate the raw and intimate feel of the bands that came before them.
The band of Rocky Mountain folk rockers, headed by lead singer Wesley Schultz, put together a 33-minute, 11-track set list that traverses a wide array of themes in a short amount of time. Schultz’s signature conversational tone that intimately speaks to the listener reigns supreme from beginning to end, with the only exceptions being “Strings” and “Sunflowers,” which are both purely instrumental.
“Same Old Song,” the opening track featuring pulsating percussion and a heartfelt chorus for the album’s Valentine’s Day release, has debuted at No. 1 on Billboard’s “Adult Alternative Airplay” chart, an honor the band has achieved now on eight separate occasions.
“Same old song. We sing the same old, same sad song,” Schultz sings with rhythmic accompaniment from drummer and co-founder Jeremiah Fraites.
The album’s halfway point, “You’re All I Got,” poetically paints a relationship from the lens of someone who can’t live without it. Schultz alludes to the Greek fable of Sisyphus “below the rock” in a gripping expose of moving on and having to “rip the band-aid.”
“You’re All I Got” is also brilliantly interpolated later in the album with “Keys on the Table,” when the familiar lyric of “You’re all I got” rings out in the same melodic fashion as it did before.
Pivoting off the seriousness of these two tracks is the more playful side of the album. This can be heard in the song “A—hole” in particular, which illustrates the temporary nature of love and fling-like romance that can slip through one’s fingertips. Lyrics such as “Your nails, they barely broke the skin. I must admit the taste of it is keeping me awake,” “We passed out on the rug, and you left before the sun” and the poignant line of “living for the love of yesterday” all build up this sentiment.
Schultz is playful again in “Plasticine,” saying “Plasticine, I can bend me into anything you need.” The song is melodically similar to Nirvana’s “Heart-Shaped Box,” which, funnily enough, Lumineers drummer Jeremy Fraites covered in 2021.
All in all, the album itself could be compared to Plasticine, as its versatile themes can bend into anything the listener needs. Whether it be the artistic representation of life’s absurdities, short- and long-term relationships, or the human longing for love in general, The Lumineers remind us that they are not a one- or two-hit wonder and that there is much more to be had than “Ho Hey” and “Ophelia.”
But for now, The Lumineers say “So Long,” ending their 20-year-in-the-making album with an epic track that, if anything, cements the band as modern-folk royalty.
