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Sigh No More
Folklike music doesn't stay quiet in the hands of London band Mumford & Sons. Hardly a song on the band's debut album, Sigh No More, goes by without a vigorous buildup into a foot-stomping chorus -- even if that chorus happens to be saying, "Darkness is a harsh term, don't you think?/And yet it dominates the things I see."
Mumford & Sons are part of the latest iteration of trad-rock from Britain. With performers like Laura Marling and Johnny Flynn, they have rediscovered the modal melodies and unflinching lyrics of traditional songs as a foundation for their own. Marcus Mumford, the band's songwriter and lead singer, merges those folk roots with the often glum but upbeat rock of Dave Matthews, showing a similar grain in his voice.
Together, Mumford & Sons -- the four band members are not related -- reach back to the way British families once harmonized closely on traditional songs. Their tunes echo sea chanteys, Celtic ballads, and jigs and reels, while also reaching across the Atlantic for bluegrass. They play mostly acoustic instruments, with plenty of guitar-strumming and banjo-picking. Yet their dynamics aim for settings much bigger than porches or parlors; the songs are as volatile as grunge. A lone guitar opens I Gave You All, but by the time Mumford finishes denouncing a person or an ideology that betrayed him, the full band and a brass section have mustered behind him, only to disappear and leave him solitary again at the end.
There's something of Dexys Midnight Runners in the way the music goes bounding forward while the lyrics seesaw between misgivings and affirmations. "I will hold on hope/And I won't let you choke on the noose around your neck," Mumford vows in The Cave, as Winston Marshall's banjo plinks briskly behind him. "And I'll find strength in pain."
Mumford sings about soul-searching, pondering troubles that intertwine the romantic, spiritual and existential. He's not exactly easygoing; in the songs on this album, every doubt is a chasm, every breakup a disaster. "A white blank page and a swelling rage," he sings in the accusatory White Blank Page, as the band strums a surging crescendo for each line, then quiets and starts again in the next. "You did not think when you sent me to the brink."
Not that he's always self-righteous. The rousing chorus of Little Lion Man admits, "It was not your fault but mine," with a tune as jovial as a pub sing-along. For all the torments and uncertainties that Mumford sings about on this album, there's the momentum of a hoedown to carry him through.
