Four years ago I was 16 years old, a budding punk in a small town. There would be other incarnations of me as I grew up — a tomboy, a hippie, a hipster — before I finally settled into my own skin and accepted who I am today.

It’s the same thing for The Lumineers. The band’s first, self-titled album was released in 2012 and was quite similar to 16-year-old me — very determined to figure out who and what it was.

Their new album, “Cleopatra,” is not an attempt to discover themselves. The Lumineers know who they are now and know what they play — sad, dark, beautiful folk with glimmering Shakespearean references and forsaken love that bleeds through each line.

It’s difficult not to compare it to the band’s early debut because in some ways it is similar, and in others it is extremely different. But for me, that’s the telltale sign of greatness: not repeating the first album but adding to it in order to create something new and yet just as lovely.

“Ophelia,” the first single that was dropped, echoes the first album with its jaunty piano and longing lyrics. But the similarities stop there. Their 2012 debut is folky fun, with songs like “Classy Girls,” and the don’t-listen-to-it-because-you’ll-never-get-out-of-your-head “Ho Hey.” Instead, “Cleopatra” writhes in the darkness of lost loves and lies, with songs like “Angela,” “White Lie” and “Sick in the Head.”

The layered folk is still there but smokier, older and more mature. Four years has taught The Lumineers something new and allowed them to create a different sound for “Cleopatra,” one fitting for the Queen of Egypt.

Themes of this album mostly include the idea of getting older, of losing people and of discovering that things don’t always work out the way that they should. The band spent six months in a house in Denver to write it, mostly focused on isolation and pondering their own fame and success.

And the album does sound true. Schutlz sings plaintively in “Angela” — “The strangers in this town / They raise you up just to cut you down.” There’s the haunting song “My Eyes,” which details the destructive power of fame — “You always confused your servants for friends / But you couldn’t see how it ends / It’s all or nothing to you.” The lyrics listen like pages ripped out from a journal.

While “Cleopatra” relies on none of what made listeners fall in love with The Lumineers in the first place — the love songs, the upbeat romance, the stories — it instead relishes in the band’s own honesty, in their own darkness.

We can’t stay 16 forever, after all.

Emera Riley is a sophomore magazine journalism major. Her column appears weekly in Pulp. You can email her at elril100@syr.edu or follow her on Twitter @emerariley.

Published on April 12, 2016 at 8:58 pm