Wednesday, August 7, 2013

BUT HOLD ON TO HIM! PLEASE! Whatever you may think of the new video, Eric Sundermann implore that you "don't let Mumford & Sons trick you into liking them":
The video presents a self-aware and ironic portrait of Mumford & Sons, and it shows that these guys get it. They know that Marcus Mumford looks like a clerk in the Oregon Trail games and that banjos are inherently goofy and vests are "quirky," which in this case is kind of a stand-in for "stupid" and their folk-stompy style has become so common that it's practically a cliché. They understand! Get it?! Do we get that they get it? ...
Outside of this stupid music video, the music Mumford & Sons makes is very bad. It's overtly sincere folk rock. It's more earnest than a sophomore in college who discovered Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass for the first time and quotes it regularly. It's more pretentious than tattooing "live, laugh, love" on your leg....