Timeless and (Almost) True

Artist: Mumford and Sons
Album: Sigh No More
Label: Island Records (UK) and Glassnote Records (US)

      Don’t worry, there is a Mumford in the band. His name is Marcus. Therefore the first half of the band’s name is, in fact, logical. Unfortunately, the other members of the band are not actually his sons, but his close friends. Now, you might be thinking that this is an irrelevant point. It is not. In the following paragraphs, I will now use this somewhat trivial observation as an analogy for their music.
      From the band name to the lyrical content to the music itself, the Sons thrive on paradox, on almost’s and nearly so’s. For instance, their sound is grounded in folk idioms, but it is not folk. It is British music made by relatively young British lads, but it is somehow both deeply American and as ancient as the earth. It is loud but tender. It is quietly intense and joyfully gloomy. This inconsistency is part of what makes the Sons such a compelling act. Without bothering to explain the why’s, they simply are. And they are good.
      As an album, Sigh No More is a smashing success. It flows well from song to song, never seems to drag, and reveals new layers with every listen. It is one of the few albums that I don’t mind listening to in its entirety, due to its excellent balance of repetition and variation.
      The basic sound of Sigh No More is really quite simple. Everything is based off of old-time music structures, complete with guitars, banjos, mandolins, pianos, and even an upright bass. However, it isn’t so much what they are doing that is so groundbreaking, as how they are doing it. Their instinct for tone, climax, and tempo borders on brilliance.
      points, I would have to start with the Avett Brothers. Both bands utilize much of the original structure and instrumentation of folk music, but instill within it an adolescent aggressiveness and a pop accessibility that resonates with me and my fellow twenty-somethings.
      However, Mumford and Sons take this basic formula in a slightly different direction than the Avett Brothers. With their heavy and often regretful tone, the Sons are more reminiscent of acts like Glen Hansard and Damien Rice. However, while Rice pursues the quieter paths of melancholy, the Sons charge full speed ahead, attacking gloom with anthemic choruses and Hansard-like bellows.
      Throughout the album, Mumford sings confidently and with feeling. The earnestness with which the lyrics are delivered really calls attention to the content of the songs. At first, I only noticed that they used interesting words like giddy, fickle, and woozy. Upon repeated listens, however, I began to find the beauty and wisdom in many of the lines. For instance, the opening stanza of “Winter Winds” begins with the image-laden passage, “As the winter winds litter London with lonely hearts/Oh the warmth in your eyes swept me into your arms.”
      By far my favorite piece of lyricism occurs in “Dustbowl Dance,” a goosebumps-inducing song that really showcases the musical talent of the Sons. The combination of detailed narrative content and musical euphoria that occurs in the last half of the song is simply breathtaking. Then, after the band thrashes out a blistering musical interlude, Mumford sings the chilling final lines “Well yes sir, yes sir, yes it was me/I know what I've done, cause I know what I've seen/I went out back and I got my gun/I said, ‘You haven't met me, I am the only son.’”
      After this battering ram of a tune, the Sons finish up the record with a thoughtful, gentle song aptly titled “After the Storm” in which they sing “And there will come a time, you'll see, with no more tears/And love will not break your heart, but dismiss your fears/Get over your hill and see what you find there/With grace in your heart and flowers in your hair.” In this almost spiritual moment, Mumford and Sons are able to momentarily take their listeners out of their broken world and bring them to that peaceful place of beauty and refuge.