Appalachian Revival: The Alt-Folk of Mumford and Sons, The Lumineers, Fleet Foxes, Civil Wars and Others

Mumford and Sons

There is a kind of feet-stomping melancholy to the music of Mumford and Sons and more recently, The Lumineers.

Listen to the song 'Winter Winds' from the former and 'Ho Hey' by the latter. Both songs deal lyrically with death and loss but you can't help tapping your foot to the beat. The songs are sad but alive, they dance in their bandages to quote the Sufi poet Rumi.

The banjo, an instrument traditionally used in folk music  provides 'Winter Winds' with a riveting, chilliness, a backdrop instrument as Marcus Mumford describes a plague-ridden London, a world of 'lonely hearts'. This isn't a paradise of love. And with the chorus, the song becomes less uplifting:

And my head told my heart: Let love grow

My heart told my head this time no, yes this...this time no

We get the impression that the narrator would rather succumb to death than give himself solely to love. The message is mired in despair and yet the trumpet... the guitars strumming... and yes, that lone banjo brings on the swell of hope to counter the bleakness of the song. And look out, you're tapping your hand on your knee or shooting your foot down on the floor to keep time.

Turn to the popular 'Ho Hey' by The Lumineers. Ho...hey... is chanted as if to encourage the guitar picker/singer's in his song of doubt and confusion, spurning him on.

The Lumineers

(Ho) So show me family (Hey)

All the blood that I will bleed

(Ho) I don't know where I belong (Hey)

Where I went wrong

(Ho) But I can write a song... (Hey)

I belong to you...

And there it is, that foot-stomping gaiety, that tingle in your soul, that rippling of what-the-hell and happiness as if the song was jettisoning its own loneliness and grief.  And there it is, the mandolin like a rusted harp, resilient and aching as the narrator explains why the girl of his dreams should be with him and not the other guy. Always that love triangle, that need to convince but still, ho... hey...

And in the finished product, it's not so much the song, but what the song evokes. And that goes for a lot of the tunes on these albums. 'Sigh no More' from the former band and 'Stubborn Love' from the latter. A greater mood that feels historic, that it might belong to a place in time but it doesn't matter.

No.

It is without world and place. One might see images of sullen, broken barns or homes on the outskirts of ancient towns, the dust of roads, a sagging fence, the crescent loneliness of a moon in the sky without any accompanying stars or clouds. There's a rocking chair on a forlorn front porch and inside the screen door, a set of stairs and wooden bannister and floor boards everywhere. It is a nostalgia for a past that never existed, a longing to get back to where nothing ever was. 

But the barn will soon be lit up, like a dance in a John Steinbeck novel and soon enough that porch will be populated with musicians. 

Mumford and Sons and The Lumineers are not alone in crafting songs of homespun beauty and mirth. In Seattle, the city that gave us Grunge, the Fleet Foxes have taken off and this isn't your older brother's garage band approach to music. Listen to the song 'White Winter Hymnal', Robin Pecknold repeating litany-like "I was following the...I was following the...I was the following", his voice echoed by the band. When the song is unleashed, it remains simple, direct and there's that beatific beat:

I was following the pack of swallows

In their coats, their scarves of red round their throat

To keep their little heads from falling in the snow

And I turn around and there you go

And Michael you would fall and turn the white snow red

As strawberries in the summer time.

And then from there, it builds into a dream-like world, euphoric, half in dusk, half in a snowstorm of pounding drums, unison voices, guitars and humming. It is a like a chant, a church piece, a hymn but instead of praising Jesus and the Lord, it is an enigmatic little tale, without a doubt almost inscrutable. Is Michael a swallow or a boy? Is he bleeding or is it the scarf unfurled crimson on the snowy field?

Does it really matter considering how haunting the music is?

Then there's the magnificent 'Meadowlarks', perhaps my favourite track on the Fleet Foxes eponymous album. Here, it isn't so much about the beat but the images, the mood. Pecknold plucks his guitar and sings this piece as if on an arcadian hilltop instead of a studio...

Fleet Foxes

Meadowlark fly your way down

I hold a cornucopia and the golden crown

For you to wear upon your fleecy down

My meadowlark, sing to me.

Humming bird just let me down

Inside the broken ovals of your olive eyes... 

I do believe you gave it your best try, 

My hummingbird sing to me

It is music of pure genius. It is and isn't a ballad but a poem, an elegy of abandonment and wearied hope and yet for all its sylvan mystery, whether it's about a girl, a bird, about a moment in time  it is all irrelevant. It is like looking at a Chagal, a Bosch or a Breughel and trying to explain its touch, what it all means. 

The Civil Wars 'Barton Hollow' reminds me of the grittier, troubadour songs on Bob Dylan's first album, Bob Dylan. Dylan arrived in New York City from Minnesota in the early 1960s and simply soaked up the Greenwich Village folk scene, re-interpreting classic folks songs such as 'House of the Rising Sun' and 'Man of Constant Sorrow' Listen to his  version of 'See That My Grave is Kept Clean' and then listen to the Civil Wars. The latter's track is more layered than Dylan's early works. The singing is far more clearer and Joy Williams is definitely easier on the ears (and the eyes). She has a bit of Alison Kraus in her and something else, a lament, a bit of fury. But there it is, that music that is half-moan, half-sonnet, it writhes and dances.

I can think of other great examples of this type of music I can't help but call Appalachian Revival...  This is music rooted in the ghostly, agrarian influences of songs from the southern U.S., from Ireland and Scotland. 

There's 'The Water' (studio version) by Johnny Flynn, sung as a duet with Laura Marling. A simple song when viewed superficially. Johnny strums and adds a few riffs when the tune is stripped down and naked but on the album, it is like a solemn waltz, the lyrics adding grace and longing. The narrator is looking for a world beyond his own, one without pain. 

Johnny Flynn and Laura Marling

The water sustains to me without even trying

The water can't drown me I'm done....

With my dying.

Now the land that I knew is a dream

And the light on the distance grows faint

so wide is my river, the horizon a sliver

The artist has run out of paint.

Where the blue of the sea meets the sky

And the big yellow sun leads me home

I'm everywhere now, the way is a vow

To the wind of each breath by and by...

I am reminded of the German poet Friedrich Hölderlin and his famous poem Abendfantasie and the longing to be up amongst the purple clouds, to be up there in the youthfulness of the sky, a place without isolation and hapless wonder. In one of Hölderlin's other poems he write 'I am all things at once' which is like the above's 'I'm everywhere now, the way is a vow'. (Also check out the live, 'naked' version of 'The Water')

There are other examples, Bon Iver's first album, For Emma, Forever Ago and even Ryan Adams' Jacksonville City Lights has beautiful pieces that evoke a bit of the Southern Gothic, the Appalachian. There's also the Canadian group Hey Rosetta ('There's an Arc') and of course, one mustn't forget Britain's Dry The River and their beautiful 'Bible Belt'.

I am deeply impressed with these musicians and their craft, their ability to enchant by using the motifs and folks roots to add rhythmic beauty to modern, popular music. Finally, there is a depth to what is being played on the radio, music that reaches both back into the past and into the future. One can only hope this will continue and breathe new life into this world of synthetic tunes, this world so sadly suffering from the shadows of American Idol and the X-Factor. This is music reflective of other concerns, about life and death, lyrics that are poetic, songs of sepia and jilted joy with purer and livelier pulses.

This is music with dirt on it shoes, that has come in from the fallowed fields. The music that has lived, traveled and returned to tell the tale. 

About time.