recently i wrote about florence + machine, and how her/their album was such an integral part of 2010 for me, not just in terms of musicality, but also as a source of inspiration + comfort. mumford & sons is the other side to that same coin of music/love for this year. this past february i downloaded the mumford & son song “the cave.” it was in a slew of other new music finds, somewhere in between grand hallway + sonya cotton, or maybe pearl and the beard. mumford & sons stuck, though, like no other. their inaugural album sigh no more touched me in a way that can only be described as damien rice-ian. when i first heard damien rice in 2003 i was fifteen and had frizzy hair and wild dreams, a short fuse and a big heart, red + pulsing right there on my sleeve. listening to damien rice was a way for me to take my own temperature, to settle into something that was brimming with emotion that was beautifully controlled. it changed me.
i’m not fifteen anymore. i’m not even a teenager anymore, so listening to mumford & sons for the first time this year wasn’t exactly the same as finding mr. rice emotionally speaking, but in the way in which i connected to the music, the physical melodies, the lyrics, the sound, it is identical. and that’s as high a compliment that i can give about an artist.
so here are those english folk renaissance men, mumford & sons…
p.s. sid’s point streak ended last night at 25 games. i am all ennui now because of it. i really wanted him to be able to twirl his honorary mustache. ah well. here’s to the next outrageously amazing recent hockey history record he breaks :)
florence + the machine isn’t new to this blog. i even have a tag just for her. since 2010 is coming to a close, though, i thought i would feature the artists that made the deepest impression on me this year, the musicians that i played on the heaviest rotation, and that 2010 wouldn’t have been 2010 without. that definitely includes florence + the machine.
you know how people have albums that encapsulate a certain time in their lives? like when people say “holy crap, kate bush totally got me through freshman year of college”, or “dude, green day is the music of my first summer in wyoming”, things like that. for me, florence + the machine is the music of my mother’s cancer. i know, what a downer, right? but it’s really not. i heard her music for the first time within a couple of weeks of my mother being diagnosed, and instantly fell in love. the rest just came down to timing. and i’m thankful for that, because i’m not sure how i would’ve gotten through those first few months without florence + the machine. there is so much emotion + vibrancy + symphonic overload in her music that it’s incredibly easy to disappear into, or at least use as a fantastic distraction. and for that, her songs will always be close to my heart, and totally encapsulate the first few months of 2010.
