Opinion Review

The Lumineers Press Conference

It’s a balmy Thursday afternoon in Cape Town and in a conference room inside the newly refurbished Fire & Ice Hotel, The Lumineers take their seats in front of an eager media crowd gathered to question them. Members of the media stare wide-eyed at the indie folk rockers and they stare equally as enthused back.

I get the feeling this is all still very fresh and exciting to them and it’s super endearing. God bless the honeymoon phase.

The band speaks casually about their Grammy nominations and their hometown of Denver in Colorado, where Neyla Pekarek (cello) gushes about its community-orientated scene, how everyone helps each other out and how “it’s a very good home for musicians.”

They talk about how their upcoming shows are, “bigger than most US cities we’ve ever played,” and how they had an elephant charge them while they were on “safari”.

Stelth Ulvang (piano) also chimes in about the beauty of Cape Town, “I climbed Lions Head today, it was beautiful. Turns out if you look away from the harbour you have very beautiful beaches here.”

The question is posed as to whether or not they have anything planned for the memorial of Nelson Mandela’s death tomorrow and Wesley Schultz’s (vox and guitar) answer is very polite stating, “I think in general as a band we’re very careful of just trying to just stick to music, because if you try and politicise something, even in a good way or say something some people can take it the wrong way, and the bigger we get we try to stick to our music, I don’t think we’d be very good at preaching.”

If The Lumineers are as eloquent onstage as they were this afternoon, we’re in for three killer shows.