The Lumineers were the last concert I had planned for the week and I got to see them perform live last night here in London. The doors were going to open at 6:30PM so I was hoping to arrive to the venue at around 4:30 but ended up arriving at around 5:30PM. There were two long lines when we got there and we decided to stand in one of them but then I noticed a third line that was fairly empty, at first I thought it was a priority line or for people without tickets but we asked one of the organizers and he told us it was a third line they had just opened. So we ended up moving over to the newly opened line and headed right up to the front. When the doors finally opened we headed straight to the stage area and it was still empty since we were the first group to get there so we ended up standing second row center stage.
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The venue the concert was being held at was a palace located on top of a hill surrounded by acres and acres of park land. From the main entrance into the main concert hall we had to pass through 2 large palace wings, the first had the security and ticket check while the second wing had an indoor market, they had picnic tables in the middle surrounded by different food stalls all around. The actual concert hall I guess was originally a huge ballroom and easily fit us all even though we were over 10,000 fans last night according to the organizers.
Before The Lumineers came on, a band called Thao & The Get Down Stay Down opened up for them. I hadn’t heard of the band before but the lead singer had a lot of charisma and was pretty cool to watch. They played for less than an hour before The Lumineers finally came on.
[YouTube]
I have no clue how we ended up second row to The Lumineers but it was incredible since it made the concert a much more personal experience. They’re super talented obviously with each band member playing on multiple instruments throughout the night. At one point even the drummer and pianist swapped places with each playing the other persons instruments. They pretty much played all their popular songs from their album in addition to ‘Gale Song’ which is off the new Hunger Games movie soundtrack as well as my personal favorite, ‘This must be the place’ which is a cover for the Talking Heads (watch it above).
It was a great night and I’d highly recommend watching them live if you ever get the chance to.
4 replies on “The Lumineers – Live in London”
The Lumineers gig looks simply brilliant I’m sure it was well worth it after seeing this thoroughly enjoyable show. I have listened to The Lumineers MP3 and youtube for more than a year now and they continue to demonstrate a highly talented dignified humility during their performances..
Next you are in London in the summers head to Hyde Park for the Concert in the Park. Not to be missed.
One of the best live bands out there, you can really see them connect to their music and it sounds so damn good. They’re so humble and sweet too! I also love the fact that they got the audience to participate.. for one of their songs they stepped away from all their mics and amps and walked to opposite sides of the stage and started singing and playing from there, used the acoustics of the venue to get their voices out and we got to help out with the chorus, hopefully they did the same thing at your gig!
Sounds like a great gig. I guess you were at Alexandra Palace (never actually a palace, it was designed for public entertainment – and was once the home of BBC TV!).