Lord Huron @ UCCU Events Center 10.21.2025

Ben Schneider of Lord Huron playing guitar and singing at the mic, on stage at the UCCU Center in Orem, UT.

Lord Huron’s live performance was a near-perfectly stitched fabric of recent tracks and long-loved standouts from their entire discography.

Image: Logan Sorenson

Concert

In their second sold-out show in Utah this year, on the back of the July LP drop, The Cosmic Selector Vol. 1, Lord Huron demonstrated that they are the coolest space cowboys in indie since their meteoric rise via the Netflix series 13 Reasons Why spotlighted their melancholy single “The Night We Met.” A packed house on the Utah Valley University campus marred by the stain of sociopolitical violence last month seemed entirely jubilant, regardless of recent history. Having played the more intimate Sandy Amphitheater just months ago, the band managed to pull a more massive and equally enamored audience for round two.

Opening act Kevin Morby delivered a rockabilly set that surprised the eager crowd with strangely buttery sounds delivered by their swaggering master saxophonist. Not since peak Bill Clinton have we witnessed an avuncular middle-aged white man make said instrument weep. Their set was brief but effective in riling up the audience for their beloved headlining heroes.

Autumn is the season for an act like Lord Huron, always thematically chanting about nature’s oddities and enormity. More than merely drawing the proverbial flannel-clad droves, the band’s ethos is an examination of the painful interiority of man lost in a vast wilderness and darkening sky. There’s an artful regret, exaltation and isolation that suffuses much of their sound, performed live with consummately professional musicianship. They’re genuinely a masterclass in indie rock as curated by their Great Lakes-born, LA-expatriated front man. Any listener, be they novice or proper aficionado, would be truly challenged not to name several beloved tracks by this fixture to the genre (Vide Noir for the win, don’t fight me in the comments).

Lord Huron’s live show was wonderfully curated to their singular sound. The show began with a stage cleverly riddled with a mélange of rock faces and anachronistic appliances hearkening to their recent album’s iconography. An instantaneous feeling of being marooned in Bakersfield, feeling bewildered and frustrated, set the scene. Expert stagecraft created an immersive environment perfectly encapsulating the lonely traveler brand of the band. The set began with performative brilliance via a phone-booth-turned-crackling-mic, which front man Ben Schneider crooned into with a synced camera capturing his visage and projecting it toward the audience. The first album single, “Who Laughs Last,” featuring spoken work by Kristen Stewart, set a frenetically introspective tone for the night.

The clever mic adaptation was merely one genius element in a live performance of remarkable skill and sonic exactitude. The band’s seven-person touring complement captured the full fidelity of Lord Huron’s beloved soundscape. Numerous songs included a professional two-person narrative fantasy ballet hearkening to the midcentury-modern vibes of the band’s enduring aesthetic. At times, the lone suited dancer dropped into miming alongside a haunting projection map, depicting a Sisyphean struggle to make sense of where one fits in the halting galaxy.

Lord Huron’s live performance was a near-perfectly stitched fabric of recent tracks and long-loved standouts from their entire discography. As the second half of the performance unfolded, embellishments of a master fiddler and mournful pedal steel guitar joined the array of multi-instrumental artistry. Mid-set, the band’s stylish songster advised the audience that The Cosmic Selector Vol. 1 must be listened to exactly as indicated by the track list. I gift you this insider tip to take from the night’s revelries. Whether you’ve spun this one multiple times or have yet to break it open, listen with care to the story being told across the album.

When you’ve attended a proper myriad of live performances over time, you begin to witness the demonstrated aspects of a “good show” versus a superior live music act. What fundamentally differentiates them is a narrative arc, a touch of clever stagecraft and a polished yet organic presentation from the band itself. If an artist can retain their fundamental studio sound yet alter certain aspects of their arrangements just so as to blend in these elements, they set themselves apart. Lord Huron succeeds on all of these levels. This space oddity band seems to simultaneously exist on both the hard, frosted ground and amongst the sparkling cosmos. Lord Huron’s live performance typifies this ethereal tension. The next time this act returns to our town, I cannot suggest more that you make a magical night of it.