I don’t believe I’ve honestly ever listened to Mumford & Sons. I mean, I’m sure I’ve been subjected to their music while folding my laundry at one point or another, but I can’t say that I’ve ever consciously been aware of their music. If I have heard a song of theirs, it left no discernible impression on me one way or another.
From what I gather, they’re sort of an earnest, post-Coldplay band who — until recently — only played acoustic instruments. They seem to wear a lot of suspenders and tweed and grow lots of retro-facial hair and essentially play a brand of hipster-lite-pop for soccer moms. I know Graham Parker thinks they’re shit, and I pretty much trust Graham Parker.
From what I can tell, Mumford & Sons (and, really, talk about a shit name) strike me as a marginally less cloying, British version of The Lumineers …. who I fucking hate.
Fine. Whatever. It’s recently come to my attention, however, that on their new album — on which they’ve “gone electric” (ooh, how Dylan of them!), they open proceedings with a song called — wait for it — “Tompkins Square Park.” For a variety of reasons, this caught my interest.
I listened to the song. It didn’t offend me to fits of withering speechlessness. I mean, they definitely have that Coldplay thing going. I kept waiting for it to begin, you know. It’s a lot of melodramatic preamble without a great deal of payoff. That said, it’s certainly less irritating than other horrible contemporary bullshit like, say, “Bitch, Better Have My Money.”
It does make me wonder, however, if they’ve ever actually set foot in Tompkins Square Park. Because I essentially live in the past, when I think of Tompkins Square Park, I think of songs like this and images like the one up top by Q. Sakamaki. Of course, Tompkins Square Park today is a very different scene, so who’s really wrong here?
My favorite aspect of all this, however, is a gentleman named Clifford Stumme. Stumme is, evidently, a Mumford superfan (and there’s nothing wrong with that — I count myself as a Killing Joke superfan, so fair enough). Take a look at Stumme’s rapturous unpacking of Mumford & Sons' “Tompkins Square Park.”
I’ll stick with Missing Foundation.
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