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Mumford & Sons - Sigh No More

I'm adding them on Facebook. I'm reading through their MySpace looking for gigs in Bristol. I'm wailing along with their songs and learning to play them all on guitar. I think it's love.
     Mumford and Sons' album Sigh No More currently has pride of place in my CD collection. The London quartet, formed a scant two years ago, have been nominated for scores of awards by the NME, XFM, triple-J and probably quite a few other acronymous music awarding bodies in categories toasting New Music and Breakthrough Acts. But the music they're playing is far from new- the four bonded over a love of Bluegrass, Folk, Country... The acoustic guitar, the banjo, the references to crops and harvests are normally present in a kind of music associated with old men in pubs and slender women with flowers in their hair. So what is it about Marcus Mumford, Country Winston, Ben Lovett and Ted Dwane which gives their version of Folk such a huge popular appeal? Why are they played alongside Placebo and the Arctic Monkeys, when they may actually be more akin- in sound, anyway- to Mandelinky or Neil Young?
     The boys are currently in tour in Australia, far from the Winter Winds they lament so beautifully. After playing to sell-out crowds Down Under, they're going across the pond to visit America & Canada (shows in four cities sold out), then it's back for a festival in Paris and a run around the UK (twelve cities, yup, you guessed it, sold out). On their MySpace page, fanatics from the world over rave about seeing them, or even, as one Canadian girl professes, having to pay $210 for a pair of tickets, a markup which she's sure "will be worth it".
     Oddly in a band so young, their reputation preceeds them. This jolly around the world comes after only a couple of years' hard graft gigging as a band- before that they were each playing various instruments in various bands around London. And this, I think, is the key to their success. Far from the one-hit wonders who can program a track into their Apple Macs like there's no tomorrow, Mumford and Sons started out gigging and simply carried on, being swept up in a wave of success unexpectedly as they went along. Their website's biography confesses their low expectations in making it in the "pretty daunting London music scene", and rightly so- bars across the country are awash with unsigned bands each hoping for their shot at making it, and most of them won't.
     But here is a double bass, a banjo, an acoustic guitar and a piano that have shot into the sky and just keep going. Four haunting voices lamenting a love and a regret with a few nods to "the faith I left behind" to bring them above the layer of new bands thick as clouds, then add in a drumbeat as simple as a heartbeat, the odd trumpet solo, and we're away. Meanwhile, videos stream all over the internet showing them clothed in linen waistcoats standing in fields, making us all long for the festivals where they so rightly belong.
     I kicked myself when I found out they were at Glastonbury this year and I missed them. I need them to be there this year or I might just declare myself heartbroken. It's real this time. I haven't felt this way since The Killers

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