English folk outfit
Mumford & Sons
' full-length debut owes more than a cursory nod to bands like the
Waterboys
, the
Pogues
, and
the Men They Couldn't Hang
. The group's heady blend of biblical imagery, pastoral introspection, and raucous, pub-soaked heartache may be earnest to a fault, but when the wildly imperfect
Sigh No More
is firing on all cylinders, as is the case with stand-out cuts like
"The Cave,"
"Winter Winds,"
and
"Little Lion Man,"
it's hard not to get swept up in the rapture. Like their London underground folk scene contemporaries
Noah & the Whale
,
Johnny Flynn
Laura Marling
' take on British folk is far from traditional. There's a deep vein of 21st century Americana that runs through the album, suggesting a healthy diet of
Fleet Foxes
Arcade Fire
Sufjan Stevens
Blitzen Trapper
Marah
. That melding of styles, along with some solid knob-twiddling from
/
Coldplay
producer
Markus Dravs
, helps to keep the record from completely sinking into the quicksand of its myriad slow numbers -- tracks like
"I Gave You All,"
"Thistle & Weeds,"
"After the Storm"
are pretty and plain enough, but they neuter a band this spirited.
is an impressive debut, but one that impresses more for its promise of the future than it does its wildly inconsistent place in the present. ~ James Christopher Monger