Mumford and Sons

The crowd danced and whooped and cheered and sang along, and when the set was over and the night's "special guest", the R&B artist Mr Hudson, appeared, the applause swiftly turned to boos. "I think it's a lot to do with the time – people enjoying rootsier music, reacting to manufactured music," posits Mumford quietly.

Springsteen is a crafty campaigner and he will have known his music can send men weeping along the weary way. Try telling that to a solitary candy floss seller in Southend however, he will be absolutely delighted.

http://www.fullhalloween.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/halloween-horror-wallpaper-039.jpg

http://musicimg.cyworld.com/ARTIST/002/047/2047730.JPG

they're prob crap too, but there are 3/5 reasons why the vermin who <3 the mumfords might react like that

the rest of that landfill thread is just shit music for retards, this is the living end

Calm down dude, sometimes people like music you hate, it'll be okay though.

if u r in london in 2k11 then the depravity is more apparent

"I wrote a bunch of songs about a time and a place a while ago, and I've felt like they haven't lasted," ­Mumford explains. "If we were singing about wearing Reebok ­trainers in a certain area … I'm not saying it's bad, I love songs that do that, I love Arctic Monkeys, but I personally can't do it." The lyrics for Sigh No More he describes as "a ­deliberately spiritual thing but ­deliberately not a ­religious thing. I think faith is ­something beautiful, and ­something real, and ­something ­universal, or it can be."

this is the sound of the restoration, gloopily earnest paeans to antediluvian 'values'

there is a lineage of this sort of ruritanian volkish drivel going back to the arts&crafts shit of the late 19th century

nazi cunts fuck off etc

nakhchivan is like our very own FOX pundit

right can someone explain why people are so readily associating this band with tories? are they actually tories themselves? i don't get it

i bet people love this band in ireland.

Of course they do.

right can someone explain why people are so readily associating this band with tories? are they actually tories themselves? i don't get it

1. They're posh. LOL "Marcus Mumford" etc.
2. They dress like latter-day country squires.
3. David Cameron probably likes them, right?
4. Er...
5. That's it?

really? christ almighty there's enough to hate about this band's music w/o projecting politics on them/making shit up, smh

they're hardly alone in being posh musicians or dressing like twats, and if we're going to target bands that we actually KNOW david cameron likes let's fucking start with THE SMITHS

David Cameron is the hippest Prime Minister Britain's ever had

Well, both Morrissey and Marr told Cameron to fuck off iirc, although Moz of course dressed it up in a great deal of flouncing and "do you see what I did there"-isms which made his open letter even more embarrassing than Cameron talking about music

yeah the art of pretend disbelief ppl came out with at the news that someone from 'the establishment' might enjoy a band who are (a) very very widely known and (b) not altogether musically challenging was... tragicomic

would've thought morrissey's views on immigration would make him a perfect fit for the conservative party tbh

really i'm just curious how toryism's been so widely projected on to mumford & sons when it's not overtly present in either their music or their public statements (afaik, am not an expert on their oeuvre by any means) - suspected it was just lazy thinking and this is being confirmed

cameron being an emiliana torrini fan is most o_0 to me cuz you'd prob have to have a genuine interest in music to even be aware of her

(fits though, she's like if björk was bland and middle-of-the-road - iirc she had one or two decent songs though)

I have previously noted that when I questioned Cameron on the last album he had bought (during a passing encounter at the BBC), he came back with a band so hip (Californian alt rockers Modest Mouse), I had to look them up.

lol

Neil McCormick is the Telegraph's chief rock music critic.

Neil McCormick is the Telegraph's chief rock music critic.

never forget: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/3645201/Bono-told-me-Your-song-needs-to-be-heard-now.html

xp!

It was clear we were facing an indie tory PM from the point where he picked Perfect Circle by REM on Desert Island Discs, no?

really i'm just curious how toryism's been so widely projected on to mumford & sons when it's not overtly present in either their music or their public statements (afaik, am not an expert on their oeuvre by any means) - suspected it was just lazy thinking and this is being confirmed

It's not Toryism, it's ridiculous aesthetic conservatism, to the point of self-parody. But they're massively popular with Middle England partly for that reason, and it chimes with 'trendy but regressive with rural values' Cameronism.

ie we're not saying they're Tories (although they might be), more that they make a perfect soundtrack to Cameron's Britain.

The Smiths were also hugely aesthetically conservative so it's not much of a surprise that Cameron likes them.

although they might be

I doubt it tbh

It's not Toryism, it's ridiculous aesthetic conservatism, to the point of self-parody.

are they particularly distinct from other shitty indie acts around atm then?

Dear Homies,

Thank you again for reading this cumbersome and pretty sad excuse for a book club. I've given up apologizing for now. So it's a bit of "take it or leave it" I'm afraid.

I was slightly blown away by people's response to The Outline of Sanity. Partly just cos so many people successfully found it! I haven't recorded my reaction to it here, and I'm actually fine with that (this isn't just a cop out)... I feel this book, even more than any others, is so brilliantly written and explained, that any of my attempted commentary won't really add to it. It's also ridiculously dense, and so rich that there's just too much to talk about in a pretty limited blog.

Suffice to say it's changed my life; but I don't expect it to, or even feel that it must, have the same effect on everyone! I think even if you disagree vehemently with what GKC puts forward, it's still a really refreshing experience to read such well considered and intriguing lines of argument. Especially now, on pretty hot topics like 'big vs small business', 'private vs public ownership', 'the man-made vs the natural', etc. The actual political ideal of Distributism, I'm still getting my head around, if I'm honest. But his thinking and his writing are just plain bitchin, in my very humble opinion!

Distributism anyone?

are they particularly distinct from other shitty indie acts around atm then?

I'd say they were even more so. I mean, look at them:

http://www.clashmusic.com/files/imagecache/big_node_view/files/images/Mumford-and-Sons-otw.jpg

xpost to Matt: But does tapping English folk for your influences necessarily equate to aesthetic conservatism, especially given the currently flourishing state of contemporary folk? (There's been a major artistic and commercial resurgence over the past few years, failed BNP entryism notwithstanding.) Sure, M&S (LOL) offer a watered-down version, but pop has always plundered with impunity. I think there could be some questionable assumptions as to what folk represents.

Not really, because when I think of folk I mostly think of protest music or bearded CAMRA lefties. But those aspects don't really come through in Mumford & Sons - like I said upthread they're basically arena rock with folky knobs on. It's badly tapping into a classicism and misrepresenting it in the process. It'd be like a band doing Springsteen and just focussing on a sepia-tinted American past and leaving out all the blue-collar stuff.

The idea that modernity doesn't last has been knocking around in bands like this since Britpop but Mumford & Sons put it really front-centre.

Their involvement with Laura Marling makes me think they can't be all bad

... in spite of the overwhelming evidence that they are

are their lyrics particularly small-c conservative, or is it just a failure of execution? i think what i'm getting at is, is this a definite ethos that they actively push, or is it just conservative in the same way that oasis always were? (and obv you'd never call oasis or their equivalents - brother these days i guess - the perfect band for cameron's britain)

No they probably ARE the latter-day equivalents of Oasis in terms of their position, Brother aren't popular enough to hold that role. They're conservative in the way Ocean Colour Scene were conservative, but with folk instead of mod. And folk is hundreds of years older so they naturally seem more conservative, and you can really sing things like "oh, man is a giddy thing" without sounding a bit ridiculous.

Their lyrics aren't particularly small c conservative from what I've heard.

Lyrics are natural-seasonal-religious imagery, but very woolly: a directly Romantic notion of authenticity. Coldplay, with flowers. Oasis, landfill lyrics more urban, doses of pop-surreal, in a more obvious post-Lennon rock tradition?

Can be hard to figure out what's going on in a Mumford lyric, sompared to The Wombats say. Could be talking to God, could be a girl, could be a mate he's let down.

... or a manservant, valet, groom

"I've really fucked it up this time, Jeeves"

Little Lion Man was a common phrase used among 18th century slavemasters iirc.

I do think there's some significance in them using folk music as a way for posh chaps to bond (yuck) with the common man (yuck). Picking up acoustic instruments and dressing like extras from a Hardy adaptation is enabling some sort of blurring of social position that they would never have achieved if they'd have been all britpop swagger and well into footie.

Maybe they just want to be hobbits.

I think that NZ has enough troubles without us sending them there for filming.

*trying hard not to make shit joke about 'hobbit-forming' or something equally as bad*

"Tragedy struck Mumford and Sons today when a strangely specific earthquake..."

Actually, wait, NZ worships the Fall, yeah? Mumford go down there, they'll be arrested at the airport, charged with being crap and dunked in the ocean.

x-post to the last picture. One of these instruments is not like the other ... It's like a picture of the Band if Garth had a Casio.

You mean the synth-washboard?

Has R. Carmody weighed in on this shower? Mumford-Boden-Cameron West London pseudo-ruralism would seem to be right up his analytical street.