The Lumineers live in India’s Gurugram: Wesley Schultz and Jeremiah Fraites bring their folk tavern elegia
Just a week since Lollapalooza India 2026 in Mumbai, my body was still negotiating with the aftermath. My throat felt sanded down to its rawest layer after two nights of screaming myself hoarse into punk-rock abandon, while my knees carried the dull, unignorable ache of having been asked to endure well past their warranty. The eyeliner and black nail paint that had felt correct inside that manic sprawl now looked faintly ridiculous in the mirror, like remnants of a garb incapable of dissolving back into civilian life. Recovery had become an active project, and just as I started to believe that the weekend would pass quietly, I found myself making a sharp genre pivot that felt almost perverse in its timing. Folk-rock mainstays The Lumineers were playing in Gurugram, and the psychic shift required to move from sweat-drenched pit energy to gentle harmonies and communal singing felt like a striking, almost vertiginous contrast.
Emerging in the early 2010s during the American folk revival, The Lumineers’ rise had little to do with technical spectacle and everything to do with accessibility, with songs built from spare chord progressions and melodies that felt designed to be shared. Wesley Schultz’s lyric-forward writing paired with Jeremiah Fraites’ disciplined sense of rhythm created a catalogue that travelled easily, first through radio and Spotify playlists and then into arenas without ever fully surrendering its intimacy. Over time, the band expanded into a tight touring unit, with members rotating instruments and responsibilities depending on what each song required, and that ethos followed them to India as part of their ongoing Automatic World Tour, a run that leaned enough on their latest record to feel present without slighting their storied past.
The Lumineers perform live at the HUDA Ground in Gurugram
| Photo Credit:
Samiksha Singh
HUDA Ground in Gurugram turned out to be the right container for that sensibility. The venue has quickly become a dependable stop for international touring acts, offering a layout that prioritises openness, and my own history with the space began exactly a year earlier when Cigarettes After Sex played here to a crowd content to remain suspended in place.
That memory returned quickly as the evening unfolded, because everything about this show felt slowed down and settled, from the pacing of entry to the way the crowd gathered in loose constellations rather than pressing forward in anxious waves. Compared to the constant friction of a festival environment, the energy here felt unforced, almost courteous, with enough room near the stage to move freely and enough space behind it to feel included without strain.
By the time the lights dipped around 8 pm, a concise opening set from homegrown indie band, Easy Wanderlings had warmed the room without exhausting it, and the crowd had reached that agreeable sweet point between attention and alcohol where patience feels generous. When the first syncopated synths of Alan Parsons Project’s Sirius/ Eye in the Sky drifted across the speakers, the band unceremoniously walked onstage as though the evening had simply turned another page.
The Lumineers perform live at the HUDA Ground in Gurugram
| Photo Credit:
Samiksha Singh
From that moment onward, the set moved with a fluidity that never slipped into inertia. Songs came and went in measured succession, with older anthems placed carefully beside newer material from Automatic, and what held it all together was a sense of trust in the arrangements to work their fans. Bassist Byron Isaacs emerged early as the unassuming anchor of the performance, his lines providing a muscular foundation that kept everything in motion, propelling songs forward while allowing the upper layers of melody and harmony to breathe. It was the kind of playing that rarely demands attention and becomes indispensable once noticed, the structural beam you only appreciate when you suddenly isolate its sound.
The awaited “Ophelia” arrived midway through the set. Schultz and pianist Stelth Ulvang began tossing tambourines across the stage with muscle memory alone, and when the chorus opened up, confetti cannons sent paper drifting into the night. Under the full moon, the fragments fell slowly, catching light as they moved, settling across instruments and shoulders and the open ground itself with a gentleness that suited the song’s own unrushed confidence.
Confetti rains down from the sky as The Lumineers perform live at the HUDA Ground in Gurugram
| Photo Credit:
Special Arrangement
Schultz carried the evening with an understated charisma. Dressed head to toe in white, from coat to trousers, with a Billy Joel tee grounding the look, he moved between centre stage and its edges, chestnut braids falling on either side of his face beneath a snapback that softened the silhouette. During “Brightside,” that composure took a sudden turn outward when he stepped off the stage mid-song and walked directly into the crowd. The distance between stage and crowd ceased to exist in the span of a few steps.
Schultz passed close enough for the moment to register physically, his voice holding its line as our palms connected in a high five with the clean, involuntary jolt of contact you don’t have time to prepare for. Around him, a small pocket of bodies tightened and moved with him as the song closed, a brief concentration of contained, buoyant velocity that dissolved as quickly as it formed.
The Lumineers perform live at the HUDA Ground in Gurugram
| Photo Credit:
Samiksha Singh
At the core of the band, multi-instrumentalist Jeremiah Fraites was architect and anchor. Switching fluidly between drums, keys, and auxiliary percussion, he shaped the dynamics of the set with a long familiarity with how these songs behave in open air. His unmistakeable black hat remained a visual constant as everything else shifted around him, and that sense of control carried an external logic, shaped in part by his recent work composing for the new Bruce Springsteen biopic, Deliver Me From Nowhere.
Wesley Schultz and Jeremiah Fraites of The Lumineers perform live at the HUDA Ground in Gurugram
| Photo Credit:
Special Arrangement
Fraites ensured the songs knew where they were going, but Ulvang seemed intent on testing how many rules could be bent before anyone thought to stop him. Barefoot and visibly delighted by the entire exercise, he treated the stage like an invitation for a bit of tomfoolery, running between instruments, climbing onto his piano and balancing across it like a beached whale. During the final song of the night, he took that energy directly into the crowd, cutting a diagonal path through it, parting people with laughter and raised hands.
The Lumineers perform live at the HUDA Ground in Gurugram
| Photo Credit:
Special Arrangement
“Big Parade” offered one of the evening’s most effective moments. Each member stepped forward to take a full verse, passing the microphone with the ease of a shared ritual, before the song opened into a focused drum solo from additional percussionist Reverend Derek Brown. When the final verse arrived, Fraites delivered it with an inward focus that pulled the room back into itself, closing the loop without fanfare.
Wesley Schultz enters the crowd as The Lumineers perform live at the HUDA Ground in Gurugram
| Photo Credit:
Special Arrangement
As the night settled and the crowd began to thin, the prevailing feeling resembled a medieval RPG tavern translated into real space. People stood with drinks in hand, conversations blended easily between songs, and the music carried a highlander-adjacent warmth that favoured fellowship. After the previous weekend’s overindulgence, this felt like the perfect antidote.
By the time we filtered out and turned toward the long, throttled crawl back from Gurugram, “Cleopatra” seemed to encapsulate the small, unglamorous truth of it all, that whatever currency you spent getting there, you still ended up in the back of a cab, distracted by headlights and strangers, riding home satisfied enough to let the song keep driving.
The Lumineers performed live at the HUDA Ground in Gurugram as a part of their Automatic World Tour. The event was produced and promoted by BookMyShow Live.
Published – February 03, 2026 01:18 pm IST
