Saying 'Heh' Proves to Be a Key to Success for the Lumineers
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28 | FEBRUARY.15.2013 | FRIDAY WEEKENDER: STAYING IN LEXINGTON HERALD-LEADER | LEXGO.COM Saying ‘heh’ proves to be a key to success for The Lumineers By Steve Johnson Chicago Tribune There’s a question that someone paying close attention to contemporary pop music would not be considered crazy for asking: What’s with all the shouting? Seemingly all of a sudden, bands have been having success punctuating their tunes with “hos” and “heys.” These “heys” are not lyrical content, as in Hey Jude. Nor are these chants ritually repeated, almost affect- less incantations of a song’s chorus, like in most recent Katy Perry hits. Rather, they are a form of percussion, a novel — compared to what else is out there — way of thickening a song’s rhythms and of calling back to a time before iTunes, Auto-Tune, recording technology itself. On its own terms, and as a symbol of popular music’s new willingness to reach back into our rural roots, this trend is as welcome as a third encore at an Avett Brothers show. The most obvious example is, yes, Ho Hey, the infectious, upbeat song by the Lumineers climbed as high as No. 3 on Billboard’s Hot 100, No. 1 on its rock chart and No. 2 on its pop chart. Ho Hey is so perky and undeniable, it would be the song of the summer, if it weren’t having its biggest success now. But Ho Hey is much more folk than rock. And rather than having the backing of what remains of the music industry, the Lu- mineers are an indie trio out of Denver. One member plays a cello. One wears suspend- ers. It’s no wonder Billboard itself calls the tune a “surprise hit.” Along with them, the Icelandic group Of Monsters and Men used a repeated “Hey!” to great effect on its Little Talks, a bigger hit in England than here. Edward Sharpe DAN HALLMAN | ASSOCIATED PRESS and the Magnetic Zeros rode the “Hey!” The Lumineers — Wesley Schultz, left, Neyla Pekarek and Jeremiah Fraites — are basking in the success of hit single Ho Hey. repetition in Home to love from some indie rock fans and appearances in Blue Cross assertion that a couple belong together. act The Pretenders would do a riff on that, album of the year at Sunday’s Grammy commercials. Arcade Fire used a “Hey” in “Virtually every line is punctuated by a as well, for its 1982 song Back on the Chain Awards — with paving the way for their No Cars Go, part of the Montreal band’s ‘ho hey,’ and those that aren’t get treated Gang. Is it a coincidence that the song with sound, but Fleet Foxes and the Avett apparent belief that you never can have too with a foot stomp or clap,” wrote Esquire’s the chant was The Pretenders’ only Top 5 Brothers have been toiling in folk-tinged much percussion. Andy Langer. “Intuitively fun, it also song in the United States? vineyards for years, as well. The Lumineers, though, have made the underscores the chant’s key appeal: In order It is probably not coincidence that Is it extraordinary that a place like Old monosyllabic, intermittent chant into a to sing along to a chant, you don’t actually this is happening now. Increasingly, live Town would be experiencing “a big surge key ingredient of a big hit song, one that’s have to be able to sing at all.” performance is the way bands connect with in banjo classes right now,” according to penetrated the thickets of indie rock, alt- And, music being music, this is, of fans (and make money), and decorating Tomasello? country and Americana, and moved into the course, not new. songs with bits that everybody can sing “There’s a continuous folk revival going full-on mainstream. Last month, it played Such unison vocalizing “goes way back to along to — and that show the band being on in the United States,” says Bau Graves, the song on Saturday Night Live, and it the workaday people working in the fields, loose, seeming to have fun, onstage — Old Town School’s executive director. was nominated for Grammys, for best new or building boats, or making pyramids,” enlivens the concert experience. “There was a bit of a peak that the Old artist and best Americana album. (It lost says Jimmy Tomasello, who directs the The Lumineers’ music is also, of course, Town School was born on in the ’50s best new artist to fun. in the first category. guitar and songwriting programs at part of a neo-folk revival that might well and ’60s. But it doesn’t go away. There Bonnie Raitt won the award for Americana Chicago’s Old Town School of Folk Music. be a flavor of the month, but it is a flavor are always young musicians going, ‘I can album.) “It’s in the DNA. There’s a need for a tribal worth celebrating. At the forefront is learn from that. I can pick that up and In Ho Hey, band members repeatedly dot experience that people have to have.” Mumford & Sons, bringing its love for do something new with it.’ That is what’s the tune with the two syllables of the title. In pop history, think back to Sam American folk back to these shores from so exciting about traditional music. It’s a This basic act — human voices shouting, in Cooke’s Chain Gang, the 1960 hit that England. never-ending stream.” musical time — lends texture to a simple explicitly uses the “huh (pause) hah” chant Of Monsters and Men has credited the If only there were a way to boil that acoustic song, exuberance to the song’s to emulate men at (forced) labor. New wave Mumfords — whose Babel was named sentiment down to one, exultant syllable..