Concert Review - Mumford & Sons

-Nik Magill

Yup, Nik is back!  Here is his review of a recent concert he attended with his lovely wife Raven.

                One of the very few good things that I can say came out of my previous job was that it had a connection with the CMAC Performing Arts Center in Canandaigua. And with that connection came my opportunity to buy tickets for shows a day before they went on sale to the public. With this opportunity, I absolutely could not say no to second row seats to see Mumford & Sons this past Tuesday (8/7/12).

                Raven and I have seen a handful of our favorite bands in concert so far. I’ve seen Jethro Tull about five times now. Raven and I saw Carbon Leaf and Murder By Death at the Water Street Music Hall here in Rochester as well. I will say, hands down, the Murder By Death concert (October ’10) was the best show I’ve ever seen. If you’re not familiar with the venue, it’s tiny. The stage is a scant three feet off the ground, and the crowd presses right up to the front to be right in the action with the band. Raven and I were mushed right up front with MBD, rocking out the whole time. It felt like they were performing in our basement, it was so simple and personal. So much so that, at the end of the night, the bassist tossed his pick into the audience, where it struck me in the chest. To this day I have it framed with the tickets and wrist-bands from the event. I shit you not.

                Back to Mumford. Whereas MBD was the best, this show definitely comes definitely in second. The simple yet epic presentation made it amazing. If it were in a tiny venue like Water Street, I think it would have felt even more amazing, but it’s apples and oranges at this point.

                Firstly, Canandaigua, if you’re going to have a ridiculously huge concert stadium in your old fashioned little town, you need to do something about your limited roads. Raven and I sat in traffic for about an hour and a half to get there, because everyone else was driving to the concert at the exact same time. That being said, we missed the entire opening act, and only got to see three songs from the secondary act, Dawes. Dawes was decent, from what I heard, but upon listening to their albums, I found that I only enjoyed the three songs that I actually heard live. The best part about them? Their drummer makes some super crazy faces when he plays. The whole time. He was out of control.

                Mumford came on around 9pm (and played until about 10:45). For the first song and a half, I’m not going to lie, I was slightly concerned. I don’t know if it was just me, my ears, or my positioning in reference to the stage and speakers (second row-center, baby!) but they sounded a little off. Every now and then it felt like the banjo would plunk out of key, or the keyboard and banjo were all playing at different tempos than the guitar. But, shortly into the second song, things smoothed out and it became amazing. Their simple stage effects consisted of: a half-dozen strings of lights that went from the stage up into the rafters over the audience, a few light boxes that cycled through a couple patterns (completely unnecessary, in my opinion), some bigger lamps that’d flash or glow according to the song, and their logo backdrop that cycled from the Running Horses to Gent in a Top Hat back to Running Horses over the course of the evening.

                The new music that they played, off of their upcoming sophomore album Babel, was great to hear. A ton of people in the audience were actually familiar with most of those songs, as the band has been playing them at concerts for the last few years, and thus the songs have been present on the internet for some time. One in particular, however, was the song “Lover of the Light”. Hands down a new favorite of mine and Raven’s. It’s up there with Carbon Leaf’s “Lake of Silver Bells” in terms of uniqueness, beauty and almost-make-you cry-ness. But the classics from their first album Sigh No More were just as amazing.  Some songs of note include “Little Lion Man” (the song that introduced me to Mumford when I saw them on a random viewing of David Letterman four years ago), my personal favorite (because it’s so damn passionate!) “White Blank Page”, and the one that I whispered to Raven about halfway through the show, “I hope they play ‘The Cave’.” And they did. It was their final song of the encore. And it was awesome.

                Surprisingly, lead vocalist and whom I thought of as the face of Mumford & Sons, Marcus Mumford was relatively quiet throughout the night. He spoke every now and then, but the true face and mouthpiece that evening was the pianist, Ben Lovett. He was funny and charming, and you could tell that he knew that he’s the pretty one of the band. Banjo player Country Winston Marshall said one sentence the whole night, and bassist Ted Dwane was mysteriously silent throughout the evening. I would have loved some fun banter from everyone, but it certainly didn’t detract from the show. Another bit of note is that not a single member stuck to their dominant instrument. All night we saw people jumping around from guitars (acoustic and electric) to keyboards to drums to bass (stand-up and electric) to banjo (acoustic and electric) to accordion to mandolin. Even the accompanying (not part of the band, but part of the show) violinist and horn section branched out to piano and guitar and shaker at times. It must be said, these are some straight-up talented musicians. They know their shit.

                If you love Mumford & Sons and haven’t seen them live, you absolutely must to get that full experience of how unbelievably talented they are. If you aren’t familiar with Mumford & Sons and have some interest in modern Americana (even though they’re British)/Folk music, these are the guys to start with. Check out the links to some of their songs. You just may like them. (also check out Carbon Leaf, and definitely Murder By Death, if you’re so inclined)