Americana’s beigest twangs again…

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[4.22]

Jer Fairall: Just as The Black Keys are the radio-friendly White Stripes, Mumford & Sons are Dexy’s Midnight Runners for an era that thinks itself above pop novelty in the middlebrow’s assertions of capital-T Taste. In their defense, this is rather impeccable in its structure, full of meaningful dramatic pauses and cathartic bursts that push all of the correct emotional buttons. It sounds pretty great, too: the banjo gives the full flavour of rootsiness of the sort that much of the band’s audience will never get any closer to than this, but it bounds forth with a momentum that is not easy to resist getting swept up in, and I really like the little detail of the piano that climbs the scales during the run through the final verse. But if you will forgive my cynicism, I’ve spent the last couple years gradually hating their songs a little bit more upon each forced repetition, and I have a feeling that this is far from the last I’ve heard of this one.
[6]

Brad Shoup: Is anyone out there a synesthesiac? Five bucks says this sounds like sepia and tastes like oatmeal.
[4]

Jonathan Bogart: Nearly two hundred years since it first became the defining sound of American music, the banjo remains unrivaled as a percussive instrument which can also be used for melody, or a melodic instrument which can also be used for percussion. In some ways the entire project of popular music over the same period has been an attempt to reconcile the fundamental difference between melody and rhythm, and no matter how digital or abstract the attempts get they’re still working under the conditions set by anonymous slaves in the antebellum South. Of course, this analysis is wasted on Mumford and Sons.
[5]

Anthony Easton: I like my melancholic Americana as marketing trope a bit more Gothic and a lot more American, but it’s interesting to see how quickly a band can collapse into its own schtick.
[2]

Katherine St Asaph: I’m going to take a mulligan here (as in stew, the food equivalent of Mumford) and let Robert Myers handle this one: “Despite its old-timey feel, “I Will Wait” is structured like a modern dance record…. Call it ADM, though whether the “A” stands for Acoustic or Authentic is up to you.”
[5]

Patrick St. Michel: This song is at its best when everything moves forward breathlessly, all the folksy instrumental choices and the bellowed vocals galloping without hesitation.  The parts where Mumford & Sons slow down are just a chore.
[5]

Alfred Soto: Rather long for a quasi hoedown.
[5]

Colin Small: Mumford and Sons twists the nozzle one notch tighter and sprays us painfully in the eye with self-pity. If they keep it up, it might get lethal.
[2]

Iain Mew: “I fell heavy into your arms”, he sings, and that’s the thing. They always make everything heavy. Small gestures are an alien concept to the band, and they’ve never come across a space that couldn’t be filled with a bit more evidence of hard graft. The sunrise Coldplay pianos in the middle are the only thing that seems new, but they’re an odd touch that never quite goes anywhere. I’m on record as thinking that the Mumfords’ sound works when they’re singing “I really fucked it up this time”, and this is less painfully overwrought than some of the singles in between, but they still sound like they’re trying too hard for any real feeling to slip through. 
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