Entertainment For Lively Minds
The kids are going daft for Mumford & Sons
Posted by PaddyH on 27 August 2010 - 9:12pm.
It is very gratifying to see ver kids going loco for a wee acoustic band like M&S.
Throaty sing alongs on BBC3 now.
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If they like Mumford & Suns
They're already daft.
The Arcade Fire for middle-managers.
Is it 'cos they're popular?
Why is it such a sin to enjoy them? And how do you know that middle-managers listen to such music, and why does it matter?
Mumford & Sons
It isn't a sin to like any sort of music, but it is depressing that ver kids dig the likes of Mumford & Sons and Scouting for Girls.
And don't give me that 'at least they're listening to proper music' nonsense. Crap music isn't validated by the use of acoustic guitars.
Mumford & Sons
are so painfully contrived and dull I'd actually prefer to listen to Scouting For Girls with their more recent bugglesesque pop - yes SCF are pretty trash, but that's not always a bad thing in the world of pop and roll.
A&R
Can't help but think that the A&R army sent out the search for the Brit Fleet Foxes & we ended up with M&S
And so they should Paddy
and so they should.
It was genuinely gratifying
To see thousands of teenagers going properly daft for a band that could have been playing music from any decade since the 1940s. They went nuts for them.
Right now
it's gratifying to see crowds losing their mess to anyone playing stringed instruments.
There's hardly anyone breaking through with guitars. Where are the bands who will make halfway decent third albums?
Mystery Jets
They've just released their third album, which, like the two before it, is better than half-decent.
Mixed Feelings
Pleased to hear young uns listening to music with a grounding in folk.Just wish it was better stuff.After listening to the Mumfords from Reading earlier I felt a need to listen to the Men They Couldn't Hang.Now why didn't they ever headline? Better songs IMHO, perhaps the time just wasn't right.
Also
Gratifying that the songs have such strong christian content. Maybe the kids have not noticed – it's there but quite subtle and not at all cheesy. I suppose the odd f word helps the credibility though.
Regardless of
our feelings about Mumford & Sons (I like them), surely the inquisitive young person listening will dig a little deeper and start to listen to other 'acoustic' music that may have passed them by thenks to M&S. My son (15 by the way), asked me to put M&S on his iPod and since then, he's been listening to Show of Hands and a bit of Fairport, plus some singer songwriter types so, all power to M&S if they open the doors to other acts.
Mumford at Glastonbury...
...were a near religious experience! I love their album, but it really works much better in a live setting. I'm 48 and I've seen a lot of bands, but have rarely experienced such fervour in a crowd.
There is a decent amount of acoustic music making headway with 'the kids' and with an old git like me - Laura Marling, Bombay Bicycle Club, Noah & The Whale, etc. Ever since I got into Roy Harper and John Martyn as an eighteen year old - I have always returned to acoustic guitar based music. Whether Mumford & Sons have it in them to build a career out of their sudden success remains to be seen, but hats off to them so far.
Tiny habit...
...of knocking anything recent, guitar-based and successful on 'ere sometimes, isn't there? Mostly, the stuff that's not broadly guitar pop gets a pass - Janelle Monae etc - but whooee, don't the guitar kids get a pasting?
Theory: most of us on here like the aforementioned guitar pop, and so some of us tend to think that the popular incarnation of guitar pop which we listened to first is the proper stuff, and anything since is colourless pastiche or worse. Maybe it's us that are colourless. Just sayin'
(And maybe the likes of Janelle get the pass because most of the Massive weren't listening to Stevie Wonder when we were 14, so it's not like she's treading on our childhoods. Just a thought. And, for the record, I think Janelle Monae is super.)
I'm not batshit crazy about Mumford, but they seem pretty OK. Some nice pop songs. Don't really understand how they could arouse anyone's ire. If ver kidz are starting with this kind of stuff, I've no problem with that - there's at least a reasonable chance they might dig a little deeper and find something with a little bit more substance. And who's to say M&S won't develop substance as they go along?
Nah
Don't try and read too much into it. I just think they're shite. A right bunch of blustering Jeremys and no mistake. I've never heard of Janelle but I do like a lot of young guitar-based bands.
Nah back.
I wasn't referring specifically to your post, except as an exemplar. The general Massive consensus on the current batch of successful guitar bands is overwhelmingly negative though - that's undeniable, surely? I was just wondering why it is.
I wasn't questioning THAT you think M&S are shite, and of course you're as entitled to your opinion as anyone ever is. I was trying to get a handle on why so many perfectly innocuous groups and artists attract such extravagant quantities of Massive bile, and it seems that the most hated bands on here are the ones who have sold a lot of records and appeared in the last ten years. And U2.
Innocuous
There's nothing worse than a perfectly innocuous band. There's a lot to be said for being horrifically bad as opposed to being like Snow Patrol or M&S. Insipid, soulless wank.
There's a lot...
...worse things than being innocuous, IMO, so I guess we'll agree to differ there. Off the top of my head, any of the following is likely to rile me more than a hundred Snow Patrols:
- deliberate and entirely false "edginess";
- pretend "working class" "anger";
- try-hard iconoclasm;
- some spurious obsession with "originality" over tunes or groove;
- actually trying to alienate the "mainstream" record buyer.
Funny old world, eh?
I have no interest in M&S
But there are many, many things much worse than an innocuous band, because its very innocuousness allows you to ignore it. I wasn't defending or supporting M&S at the start of what was a fairly innocuous post in itself. I was merely relating the fervour the youngsters were showing. I like that kind of fervour, it shows they care about something.
I simply don't get it
I'm not a "hater" - more curious as to why this particular bunch have received such accolades. I've heard some of the songs in their studio versions and seen them playing live on the telly, both indoors (Later) and out (various festivals). Each time they've sounded dreary. And I speak as one who is generally well disposed to acts touting acoustic(ish) instruments.