First things first: I’ll be contacting the, um, winners from the 100k post this week and offering you a choice of worthless “prizes”.
Secondly, I felt absolutely compelled to share an article with all of you, in which Mumford & Sons, along with their fellow-travelers (and frequent targets of inebriated covers by yours truly) The Lumineers, are ably and properly skewered.
Can We Stop Listening To The Hair Metal Phase Of Folk Revival?” is the question at hand. But this isn’t a vague gripe article like what you’d find on ThoughtCatalog. The author, Karl Ernest, takes dead aim at these groups and their listeners…
Skrillex caters to teenagers with metal angst and rave lust, Mumford to overwrought 20-somethings going through introspection withdrawals as indie rock’s influence fades… There’s nothing like a celebration of a hard-days’ blue-collar work sung by the voice of privilege and played with un-callused hands. I just can’t wait to get home and tweet these Industrial era lyrics to my digital-age, millennial friends. I suppose the goal is to make the listener feel more traveled and cultured by association, but the old-timey references only amount to clothes the emperor isn’t wearing.
Boom goes the dynamite, or something like that. Feel free to go read it.
I will wait.
I see what you did there.
I occasionally enjoy The Civil Wars as well, but really, the whole play your divorce out over the course of an album was done much better by Richard and Linda Thompson.
Raleigh via Glasgow always feels wrong, even if it always sounds pretty. The thing is, there are still kids out there on the rails, and they do play folk music. Notably Big T of Profane Sass who met his end that way, and in a past time Alynda, from HFTRR. The thing that bothers me about the entire discussion is that it could make authenticity formulaic - almost an algorithm to follow, and that should never be encouraged. Music is bigger than the outright fakes, the wannabees who follow some formula and crown themselves authentic, and the actual “authentics” whoever they are, or were. Can I get an amen?
Amen.
ha, nice line:
“bland pop romance meets random Deadwood to WWII-era America aura”
I’ve been getting into early Bob Dylan stuff lately…although I think he was a wannabe. heck, aren’t we all, when we get inspired to do something? usually by some one
Bob, where art thou?
Bob’s down at your friendly Chrysler/Fiat dealership, ready to deal on all them great Ameridaniexican cars that have been imported from Detroit.
He’s standing, with his six-string, between the inflatable 40-foot-high Godzilla and the arm wavey thing guy.
Ask nice, and he might give your kids a bag of popcorn.