Mumford & Sons - Sigh No More (2009)

Mumford and Sons
Sigh No More 2009 (2010 US Release)

A nice side perk of deciding to start blogging about music is people start to make recommendations.  Living in Spokane my exposure to new music ends up being pretty limited.  So when friends and family start recommending things I end up spending hours and hours on youtube, band's facebook pages, and obscure folk music review sites.  I consider this time well wasted!  A few other upcoming reviews spawned from these recommendations, but a British band my brother told me about is first because... well because it's best.

Mumford and Sons is a folk rock band from England that started making it big in London's folk/indie scene a few years back, but didn't take off internationally until they released their first full length album Sigh No More in 2009 (International and US releases came in early 2010).  Last year the album came to notoriety in Britain reaching #2 on their UK Album Chart and according to a blurb I read on the BBC website was the #3 music export from the country last year.  It got nominated for two Grammy Awards and in the US it reached #2 on the Billboard 200 charts, which is staggering for a London folk rock band.  Brit Rock been becoming more popular in the US and folk has been making a resurgence in recent years, but the success of Mumford and Sons reeks with the promise of more great music to come.

So the band consists of four members who play a range of instruments from keyboards to dobro and string bass.  I personally love banjo work and 'Country' Winston is awesome.  The guitars and percussion mix the best of folk and rock.  The bass really helps the building style and the band has mandolin, accordion and dobro!  The lyrics and vocals are powerful, but folksy.  One song in particular called Dust Bowl Dance brings up a dark folk tale of desperation during the Dust Bowl era.

In general the music takes folk instruments and indie style and applies basic rock tenets.  The songs tend to have a progression towards an emotional and energy crescendo that has the frontman really pushing the lyrics out.  The speed and tempo also are more akin to rock music than the bluegrass instrumentals, but at times the music plays close to a fast paced bluegrass breakdown such as the banjo in Little Lion Man, the biggest hit from the album, and this song shows the duality of this band.  The guitar and lyrics are powerful with swear words and a fast pace, but the banjo picking comes straight out of a Bill Monroe and the Bluegrass Boy recording.  I have hinted at the crescendos and builds utilized heavily in the album that have a power in them and this can be seen wonderfully in the White Blank Page that almost plays like a slow love ballad until it break into a passionate almost angry outpouring. Of equal note is the wonderfully beautiful anticlimax present in many of the songs that happens after the crash of emotions discussed above.  Winter Winds brings itself down from the peak in a beautiful outro, but Thistle and Weeds has the most beautiful complete anticlimax on the album. The last thing to discuss is the lyrics.  They are often powerful and usually beautiful.  The vocals are delivered in a folk way that forces a rythmic scheme onto lines that vary in syllables, but like Bob Dylan this is pulled off so well that the voice becomes just another very complicated instrument.  If you want to understand the power of the lyrics The Cave, the other big hit on the album, is a great place to look, but Dust Bowl Dance has the best and most clear cut narrative.

Sigh No More is a great breakout album for what I consider one of the best modern folk bands.  I would recommend this album to almost anyone, its multi-faceted appeal should draw in most listeners, but I would highly recommend it to fans of folk music or bluegrass.