Posted by kluster on February 8, 2010
I take my job very seriously. I don't believe in lollygagging and always arrive at a show with pen in hand, notepad in fist, ready to record. It’s an old habit and has developed over time to become something of unconscious gig-rating system. It goes something along the lines of this:
If I leave a venue with less than one of my Moleskin pages full of barely legible notes the band have played a below-average set. One to two: average. Three to four: now we’re talking. Four and above: getting close to top 10 rating. I walked out of Mumford & Sons with a cramp spreading across the palm of my right hand last Wednesday night and a rather squished seven pages filled. Here’s the abridged version of what they contained:
Jonathon Boulet opened the show with the kind of youth and young manhood-filled enthusiasm that is testament to his 21 years; delivered in the form of various extended instrumental offerings and, among others, the crowd-friendly ‘A Community Service Announcement’. The assembly threw said enthusiasm right back at him.
Mumford & Sons stepped into their set with the kind of no-fuss attitude that belies their musical complexity, launching straight into a pensively delivered ‘Sigh No More’. The evocative ‘White Blank Page’ was delivered with the same sincerity as two days prior, during the Sydney leg of Laneway Festival. And so on and so forth through what initially appear to be almost the same set list as played at the aforementioned festival.
Until the battle of the banjo/crowd ensued, that is. At the request of an overly vocal crowd member the band dropped instruments and left the obviously shocked Country Winston alone under lights. Despite some initial misgivings and flawed attempts to follow his band mates off stage Winston finally took up arms. And so began what proved an intriguing, proficient, impromptu live jam session. Interestingly enough, the band seemed as pleasantly surprised with the unexpected outcome of the musical outburst as the audience. Frontman Marcus Mumford assured us nothing like it had even happened before for them on stage. Certainly, they had the bemused air of a gifted child first realising the extent of it’s own propensity for the extra-ordinary.
During his set Jonathan Boulet had graciously taken time out to outline some of the treats in store for the audience once Mumford & Sons took to the stage. New songs, he promised. New songs the band delivered: more than a couple.
The fresh material contained the same slowly-slowly song progression that sets ‘I Gave You All’ and the self-titled track off their debut LP offering, 'Sigh No More' apart. There is, however, something distinctly indie-anthem to these new additions – one of which the band had only played twice before. It neatly distinguishes the tracks. It also makes me want to start laying bets with myself on which stadiums the band will end up filling in years to come.
Check out the above picture, and more, on the Kluster Gallery.
Were you at the show? Tell us your thoughts.
mumford & sons, oxford arts factory, jonathan boulet