Mumford and Sons - 'Roll Away Your Stone'
I sense a schism in popular culture. People - and by people I mean pop stars - are refusing to live in the present any more. They're either rushing towards a romanticised future, where every throat is made from synthetic materials and you can swap musical ideas and performance personae as quickly as you can swap games in a console, or pretending to live in the past.
The benefits are immediate, especially if you want to avoid appearing to be, like, SO LAST WEEK. If you're pretending you're in the future, you can't go out of date, and if you're pretending you're part of something which has proved to have lasting appeal over the years, something which predates electric guitars and You've Been Framed, you're so far out of date, you're *cough* 'timeless'.
Or to put it another way, you're never old hat in an old hat.
(. Invisible drummer!)
So, there are a lot of good reasons why they do it, but I think it's a shame. Folk music needs to be representative of people and what they do. There are already tons of songs about pastimes and jobs from days of yore, how about a few devoted to the kind of things that can only happen nowadays? The kind of things which we will come to look back on in much the same way we look at blacksmithery now.
So, I'm setting Mumford a public challenge (or Stornoway, or Laura Marling, first one to do it wins). I would like to hear a song from them which is about any one of the following highly-emotional, but strictly modern topics:
A close friend acting in a disappointingly ignorant way on Facebook.
The frustration that someone you did not vote for has won Britain's Got Talent.
The outlaw thrill of riding your bike on the pavement.
Running out of credit on your phone while having a row with your ex.
The empty feeling when you realise that no-one has re-tweeted the YouTube animation you made of your [popular toy brick] mini-figures acting out a fight scene from Kick-Ass, to the soundtrack of something by Pendulum.
It can still be recorded using banjos and whatnot, I'm not asking them to embrace synthpop, just to try and stick a flag in the ground of nowadays, so they can be the standard bearers of what we're about at the moment, for future generations.
It's either that or in 100 years' time, you'll see earnest groups of young men in artfully-aged baseball caps performing N-Dubz songs just like they used to when grandpappy was a yoot. Is that what you want for your sons, Mr Mumford?
Download: Out now
´óÏó´«Ã½ Music page
(Fraser McAlpine)
"Your mum's new favourite band."
"this song starts off slow and gradually builds its way up to what can only be described as a brilliant hoe down."
"[The video] seamlessly blends a studio performance with a live performance by matching the songs energetic chorus with the crowd while handling the subdued verses in the studio."
Comment number 1.
At 3rd Jun 2010, harrythedog10 wrote:Torn between these guys and Biffy Clyro at Reading and Leeds, not sure who to see.
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Comment number 2.
At 3rd Jun 2010, U14429597 wrote:Go see mumford and sons, Biffy Clyro have AMAZING energy but Simon is a horrific singer live - he just shouts and its not good!
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Comment number 3.
At 3rd Jun 2010, BloggingLiam wrote:Some twerp clashed these with Florence at Glasto, by the looks of it. SAD TIMES. as Florence trumps virtually everybody else on the bill. Would LOVE to see these. Great single from a better album.
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Comment number 4.
At 4th Jun 2010, spirit wrote:MISSING .... presumed lost .
The review of the song ,"Roll Away Your Stone ."
Has anyone seen it ?
;D
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Comment number 5.
At 5th Jun 2010, Fraser McAlpine - wrote:Ach you only ever read the opening sentence anyway.
;-)
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