The Lumineers

Every Band Is Like Son Volt

mm crut that list seems plausible, but all those ppl seem to have too much of a grasp on the actual tradition for the mumford leap into nothingness to really make sense. but then also mumfords are british and we have some kind of tradition of destroying our folk lineage while also honoring it, maybe they actually know the good stuff and went for the former but forgot the latter a little.

really at the end of history

it's sad, it was a history

well yeah - they have a grasp on tradition, but their followers don't necessarily. The same way a Rolling Stones fan might have heard of, say, Howlin' Wolf but not really know his music.

and I'm not saying everyone who makes music has to acknowledge their place in musical tradition, but these guys are obviously trying to cultivate an old-timey folk band image

these guys are obviously trying to cultivate an old-timey folk band image

But without any sense of the actual music that goes with it. Maybe it's not so much the soundtrack to "O Brother" as the movie itself, some vague idea that it would be fun to wear suspenders and fedoras.

And I'm not bemoaning any lack of authenticity, just trying to pinpoint the musical antecedents, which I think are separate from the sartorial ones.

the music is wearing banjos in the same way the ppl are physically wearing hats, is what i think is going on here.

i don't think authenticity is key either because revivals/ retrograde movements tend to bastardize or tinker with what they take from the past to suit their current needs and it becomes its own thing, but what they steal and corrupt is usually pretty specific and you can identify the original owner. i don't know anyone's stealing from here if they are at all; it's too generalized.

don't know what anyone's stealing

it's like Bright Eyes happened.

Haven't heard lumineers but the Bright Eyes guy has a lot to answer for in terms of inspiring so many shitty vocalists. I wouldn't mind arcade fire or all the car commercial indie as much if the vocals weren't all that awful bright eyes style warbly bleating. Like nails on a chalkboard.

The main issue with this stuff is how cowardly it is. It's the lesson learned from Coldplay above all else: why be small when you can go big? Why be subtle when you risk someone missing the point? Why go low-key when you can aim for the arena rafters?

Also, folk authenticity makes less money than arena-ready "whoa-oh-oh!"-alongs (see again: Coldplay, who for a minute there were on the cusp of doing something interesting but decided they'd rather be rich and famous, ie they're doing it for the people, man, not for critics). The suspenders and hats and banjos are pretty much all they have in common with "the past." The rest is straight up contemporary hokum.

man i wish they were authentically authentic instead of fakely authentic

i think you're making a joke dyl but i think "fakely authentic" is a pretty shitty pose. better to authentically "own" your inauthenticity. i feel like the stones were the best at this... juxtaposing their trad-sounding blues rock with androgynous outfits and borderline offensive fake accents; it was all so outrageous it worked, and in the 60s it felt like the coolest thing in the world. the lumineers are too tasteful to be interesting; they seem like they are trying to get away with something.

on the other hand, authentically authentic, unlike the stones' authentically fake, can be cool too. i have a friend who is like, a real student of american folk music and who performs mid-19th century folk songs on his banjo. he's a good performer and i respect what he does a great deal. so authentically authentic is good and, in my view, authentically fake is good too. the one thing you don't want to be is fakely authentic.

Do you think these guys have a trunk full of hats and suspenders they take on tour with them?

i think so. pretty sure the mumfords only own one outfit each though.

I hear they only have one outfit, sleep in that outfit, and also clean the barn in that outfit, to keep it authentic. Like Method actors.

A trunk full of heys and a suitcase full of hos

Tom Waits on The Eagles: "Those guys grew up in L.A. and they don't have cow-shit on their boots - they just got dog shit from Laurel Canyon."

what kind of shit does tom waits have

Tom's silence on the lumineers' shit more or less damning?

i remember hearing an anecdote about mark e smith throwing bottles at mumford and sons. i think i sided with the mumfords on that one.

Neil Young loves these guys, right? " don't want my MPC..."

what kind of shit does tom waits have

yeah, kind of hilarious, given the authenticity of tom's drunken carny schtick

like, The Eagles are all about being a slick west coast band, they're not fake country singers.

does anyone really care whether or not mumford & sons are as authentically steeped in olde-tyme goodness as their outfits suggest? it's like bitching about daft punk (topical) being fake robots.

i was devastated when i first learned that daft punk weren't actual robots.

i think the lumineers' (and the mumfords') specific brand of inauthenticity is specifically inauthentic, or theme-parkey. they don't constellate their attraction to old timey aesthetics with anything that feels relevant to the 21st century, and so just come across as a banal nostalgic act, like they should be playing at tom sawyer island in disney world.

instead of specifically i should have said "especially". i explain this position more eloquently upthread. i don't know whether anyone else agrees with me on this though.

disney is a good reference point for these bands

"authenticity" is about how well you sell it, not what you are

i disagree. i think it has to do with the way they approach their material, like they're playing dress up. i think you can engage with americana/rootsy sources in a more meaningful way. what the lumineers are attracted to in the 19th century feels superficial, and doesn't have much to do with the period as such. that's why they are inauthentic, in my view.

playing dress up is way fun

plus i heard mumford has advanced syphilitic dementia, so

(xpost again to hurting) terms like "authentic" are vague though and everyone has their own definition for them. i guess what i am actually describing is just why i don't like them and their schtick.

advanced syphillitic dementia seems pretty authentic

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d2/CountryBearJamboreeBears.JPG/800px-CountryBearJamboreeBears.JPG

real talk

I'd put forth Gillian Welch as an example of someone doing inauthentic authentic about as well as it can be done. There's a real depth to her songs in line with what she's borrowing/stealing from, and the way she dresses and presents herself seems more a facet of her personality than just playing dress up. It may be an affectation, but she lives it. The Mumford guys, these Lumineers ... it's not stylized so much as just plain styled.

yeah I kind of wish I didn't even drop the A-word. There are all kinds of different ways an artist can successfully engage an unlived past, from deadpan serious to full-on campy. Lumineers just have this dumbed-down vague old-timeyness to them that seems kind of pointless other than signifying warm fuzzyness

yeah, exactly

they remind me of a phenomenon I noticed a lot with indie bands maybe 5-10 years ago that I used to call We Have A Banjo. Because we were kind of alt countryish we would always get booked with indie bands obviously influenced by the O Brother soundtrack or at least the general zeitgeist of getting into rootsy, old-timey music, and the way they would often manifest this was by having a guy or girl who played banjo. This person would NEVER play the banjo well, and would ALWAYS play it like a guitar. I mean I probably saw 15 of these bands and none of them had banjo players who actually knew the slightest thing about how to play banjo. And they'd often play these slow, rink-a-dink-a-dink kind of patterns.

i figure you either want to raise your voice along with the foot stomping banjo stroking joysomeness hoedown or you don't. and if you don't, it's all gonna sound pretty bogus to you one way or the other.

i mean, i like a thousand half-written songs by bands who don't play or sing at all well, who are basically just a watered-down version of something else. second-rate secondhand garage rock appeals cuz i'm a fan, an enthusiast. this crap doesn't do it for me because i like my music a bit more self-consciously weird and alienated. i don't care about their folk authenticity any more than i care whether or not corpsepaint bands sincerely worship satan.

like i'd probably say this insufferable disney shit could eat a cookie even if their clawhammer technique was on point

lol

(hey!)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T3fAzQzgeSc

^ best pillow

Meanwhile, back at the farm
http://www.encorepub.com/welcome/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/810music-bella.jpg

the guy in the back with the (banjo-looking) stand-up bass and the wizard robe seems authentic. everyone else in that band is a poseur.

dat's one of those fancy guitars all metal guitars right?
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/88/Lee_Ritenour_-_Earth_Run.jpg