Mumford And Sons "Hopeless Wanderer"

Back in May, I wrestled with the idea of whether MVY should start playing the new Mumford And Sons song, "Babel," or take a pass, citing audience fatigue of the band/sound.

Ultimately, we did not add the single.

And a strange thing happened.  Or didn't happen.

I have received ZERO comments about this.

To my knowledge (and hey, as a qualifier, Lord knows I don't know everything) there has not been a single request for us to play the song "Babel." 

No one has called, or written, to say "How come you're not playing any more of the new Mumford And Sons?"

I find this stunning, particularly in light of the fact that their album was voted Number One in 2012 by the MVY listeners.

I mean, no requests suggests that no one cares or notices.  But voting it Number One just a few months ago also suggests the exact opposite.

What gives?

Well, the 3rd single has arrived at radio.  "Hopeless Wanderer" is in search of airplay.

Perhaps the most succinct assessment of the tune came from Barbara Dacey.  When I was about to play it for her, she asked, "Does it go to that Mumford And Sons place they go?"

Yes.  Yes it does.

Nothing new to see here.  Equally as likeable as their previous singles,  but nothing new.

So I'm back to where I was in May.

Is there Mumford fatigue?  Or are you ready for more fudge.


(Even if you can't stand the band, you're gonna love this video.  In fact, if you can't stand the band, you'll most definitely love the video!)


Hear the song on Youtube.

Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeroes "Better Days"

I always laugh to myself when I see this---and I'll try not to pick on any one group here, as this scene exists across many, many demographic groups.

You see a person.  And they really stand out in the crowd.  Something about the way they dress screams "I'm an individual!"  Maybe it's a particular, unusual haircut or jewelry.  Or a hat.  Or just a way of wearing their pants.

They are making a bold, individualistic statement.

And then you see them join a group of friends, and the friends are all dressed the same.

Like, you saw the first guy and he was wearing a vest and you thought, hmm, you don't see to many dudes wearing vests these days. and then you look at his friends and they're ALL wearing vests.

That's what trends in music can be like.  At first, you hear a band that is doing something different.  Then suddenly, 10 bands who are doing the same thing show up.

I've already written a bit about the Mumford And Sons burnout that many listeners are crabbing about.

And they are a part of this larger trend we're caught in the middle of right now.

Some friends have referred to it as "the group singing thing" but I'm otherwise not sure if it has a name.

But aren't there suddenly a dozen bands that give off a quasi-messianic vibe, thunderously strum their acoustic instruments and have the whole band join in to sing the chorus?

The Head And The Heart are a great example of this sound.

And let me say, It's a really great sound.  On the one hand, I totally love this trend.  Because I appreciate the sincerity of the singing, the democratic feel of the group-ness, the uplifting nature of it all.

But as a programming . . . yeesh, there's a lot of it.  Just to name a few:

The Lumineers
The Lone Bellow
The Kopecky Family
The David Wax Museum
Edward Sharpe And The Magnetic Zeroes
The Low Anthem
Hey Marseilles
Fleet Foxes

I have to say, there isn't a stinker in the bunch.  I think these are all solid, respectable bands.  Real musicians with real passion.

But, as a programmer, you just can't play them all.

There are many parts to what we do.  MVY has some classic rock.  We play some jazz-influenced artists.  Harder rock.  Folkies.  Some Blues.  And R&B/Soul stuff.  But the recipe calls for a little of each.

When the new music pile skews heavily to one side, unfortunately, some good bands don't make the cut in deference to the overall sound.

The Edward Sharpe track (in the video below) was the most added song to radio stations across the country, when the numbers came out Monday.  But MVY probably won't add it.  Why?  We've got a lot of stuff on the air that is similar.

And following the Jack White corollary, there's no sense hopping in bed with a band unless we think we're going to follow them for years and albums to come.

So while "Better Days" is likely to go on to do well across the country, it won't be in the MVY mix.

Because seriously, we can't all wear vests to the party.


Hear the song on Youtube.

Mumford & Sons "Babel"

A long-ago friend of mine had a theory she called: The Dichotomy Of Fudge.

It basically goes like this:

You have some fudge in front of you so you have a square.  It tastes delicious.  Immediately, you want more.

So you eat a second square of fudge.  It is extremely rich and luscious.  Now your whole mouth is filled with the taste.

You can't resist a 3rd piece.  It seems kind of indulgent, but there's all this fudge on the table and it tastes so insanely good.

By the time you are eating that 4th piece, you can hear the voice in the back of your head saying, "Maybe I should not be eating so much fudge," by that voice is quickly drown out by the voice at the front of your head screaming, "FUUUUDDDDGGGGGGEE!!!!!!!!!!"

Before you've even finished the 5th piece, all goes quiet in your head, except for the words: "Uh oh," as a wave of nausea takes over and you think you might just be sick to your stomach and so you lie down on the couch.

The Dichotomy Of Fudge is that eating a piece of fudge makes you compulsively want to eat more and more fudge, but eating too much fudge inevitably makes you feel ill.

I bring this up because there is another Mumford And Sons single out.

A Mumford And Sons single, I suddenly realize, is a lot like a piece of fudge.  On it's own, in a single bite, it is a fun and joyous experience, and if I play a Mumford And Sons song, the audience automatically wants more.

But the more I play Mumford And Sons, the more likely it is that the listening audience becomes sick to their stomachs from hearing them.

I mean, the first Mumford And Sons record was the 2nd most popular album of 2011 on mvyradio.  And the "Babel" record was voted number one in 2012, by a long shot.  These records are passionately loved by the listening audience, so we have played the hell out of them.

As always, I point out that we have played them so frequently, not just because WE like them, but because that's what the audience wants to hear.

I'm looking at the National airplay charts and the new single "Babel" is starting to climb.  Other listeners in other cities are already asking for more fudge.

So what do we do?  Go with what the front of your brain is screaming ("MUUUUMMMMMFOORRRRRD!!!")?  Or listen to the voice that says, "That's enough fudge for now, mvyradio listeners . . ."?


Hear the song on Youtube.

Son Volt "Hearts & Minds"

Sometime shortly after I have become Program Director at MVY, I was down at the Pub where I hung out.  One of my buddies was saying to a third guy:  "Did you hear that PJ got promoted at MVY?"

The third guy shrugged.  "MVY?  I stopped listening to them since they went country."

Went country?

The previous month, we'd done an On The Road trip to Merlefest, the premiere East Coast Americana music festival hosted by Doc Watson.

We gave it massive coverage on the air, playing cuts from bluegrass, country, roots and Americana artists not typically found in large supply on our station.

Was it wall-to-wall country?  No.  But here in the Northeast, a little country goes a long way.

It's always important to keep a good balance, and air only a moderate supply of songs that push away from the center-boundary of what is mvyradio.

If you look back at the old entry about how we choose songs for mvyradio, you'll see that I expressly mention that we're okay when we have a couple of Country-leaning songs.  Anything over that, and we risk sounding "too country."

So what do you do when there's a plethora of great, mvy-friendly country music out there?

We're suddenly deluged with great albums that can't really be ignored, by Son Volt, Buddy Miller and Jim Lauderdale, Emmylou Harris and Rodney Crowell, Steve Martin and Edie Brickell, and Steve Earle.  Not to mention the banjo and dobro inflected likes of The Avett Brothers, Mumford & Sons and Jerry Douglas.

I guess the answer is, you go with it. 

We can't not play the Steve Earle.  Or the Emmylou & Rodney.  It would be weird for MVY, long-time Earle and Harris supporters, to suddenly ignore a critically-praised major release of theirs.  And the curiosity factor of the Steve & Edie record alone is reason to play it---it's the kind of oddball release that listeners expect to have a place on our eclectic indie station.

I say this all the time to listeners who complain about hearing too much of one new song or another:  Songs come and songs go.  If you don't like this one, don't worry, it will run its course and fade. 

Three months from now, many of these songs will be gone from our "current" playlist, and the balance of the station will be restored, or will perhaps lean in another direction that we'll have to course-correct for.

In the meantime, we haven't "gone country."  We're just enjoying the twang.


Hear Son Volt on Youtube.


Hear Buddy & Jim on Youtube.


Hear Emmylou & Rodney on Youtube.


Hear Steve & Edie talk about their record on Youtube.


Hear Steve Earle on Youtube.

Mumford & Sons and Birdy "Learn Me Right"

The Grammys are on Sunday, and, as usual, there are a ton of weird-category nominees that might surprise and interest you.

No surprise that Mumford & Sons is up for a number of Grammys, including Album Of The Year, Best Rock Song, Best Rock Performance and Best Americana Album.

But they snagged a couple other nominations, in places you would not expect.  And if you are not a full-on obsessive Mumford fan, you may not know about these tracks at all.

The band is up for Best Song Written for Visual Media, for a track (featuring vocals by Birdy) that appeared in the excellent Pixar movie "Brave."

And they are up for Best Long Form Music Video, as part of "Big Easy Express," a concert-film/road-trip documentary, also featuring Old Crowe Medicine Show and Edward Sharpe And The Magnetic Zeroes.


Hear the song on Youtube.


See the trailer on Youtube.

Mumford And Sons "Lover Of The Light"

As noted on the earlier-this-week posts, the statistics of the Top 25 are pretty interesting.

For years, the Number One album on mvy was usually by a stalwart, heritage artist.  Someone like Bob Dylan or Mark Knopfler was most likely to garner the votes to get the top spot.  And that’s because our listeners, young and old, were operating under the consensus mind that Bob Dylan is a pretty amazing artist, and so lots of different kinds of listeners were voting for his album.

But over the course of the last few years, the Top spot has gone to a young artist who can build enough consensus from the bottom up.

Instead of being an established artist, the Number One record has been by a upstart artist with a breakout record.  And maybe that record started with the younger end of the audience, but was quickly embraced by the full spectrum of listeners.

Yes, your college student kid may have brought home the record first, but even your Dad taps along to the beat when the song comes on the radio.

So it was with last year’s Number One record, from Adele.

Adele’s “21” album managed the incredible feat of receiving twice as many votes from mvyradio listeners, as the Number Two record.  (You're gonna crack up, when you realize what was Number Two, last year)

I didn’t think anyone could pull that off again.

And yet, here we are.  Mumford And Sons’ “Babel” record actually receive more than twice the votes of the Number Two record.

You can view the whole list, and draw your own conclusions about what folks were excited about this year, on our Top 25 of 2012 page.


Hear the song on Youtube.

Calexico "Splitter"

I had mentioned earlier this year, that there was a pretty good chance the two of the biggest records of the year, would be led by the banjo.

Years ago, such a thing would be unthinkable.

Banjos were country music instruments.  And any band that deployed a banjo would be consigned to operating within the country world, regardless of how "country" they truly were.

I think it speaks well of 2012, the time we're in and the people that we are, that we have become so musically accepting of mash-ups and mix-ups and cross-genre sounds.

It makes the success of Calexico's new song possible.

When was the last time you heard a mainstream song with Mariachi horns in it?  Was it "Ring Of Fire" for crying out loud?

Calexico has included Mexican-style horns on their records, and the song "Splitter" is perhaps the most commercially accessible tune they've ever released.

Will "Algiers" break through in the way that The Avett Brothers and Mumford & Sons are breaking through?  Perhaps not.

But it's pretty amazing just how natural it sounds to have Southwestern-tinged horns tucked neatly into a song that seems to fit mvyradio perfectly.


Hear the song on Youtube.


Hear a live version on Youtube.

Mumford And Sons "I Will Wait"

In this day and age, Mumford And Sons' trajectory is pretty unheard of . . .

Their first record, "Sigh No More" was originally released in 2009.  It didn't catch on in the USA until 2010, and it didn't become a smash until 2011.

That's a loooonng time in the Record Industry's version of Dog Years.

Bands don't get that kind of time to ramp up these days.  If you aren't charted within the first few months of your first single release, there is little hope that your label is going to stick with you.

Even more unheard of . . . a band has a smash success, and takes its time with a follow up record.

The Record Industries credo is "strike while the iron is hot," and "the public has a very short memory."

If a band has smashing success, get them in a studio and get the follow up record out there ASAP!

One of the true advantages to this, is to avoid the pit of unwieldy expectations.

If I were a label person with Mumford And Sons, I might have been worried.

The new record has been talked about, and waiting for, and theorized about, and anticipated in the press, all year long.  This leaves plenty of room for people's idea of how good this record might be, to become untethered from reality . . .

Fortunately, the band leads with this single, "I Will Wait."  And smartly, it doesn't do anything to defy, subvert or torpedo expectations.  It sounds like a good Mumford And Sons song.  One that isn't a departure from what people loved about the first record.  It's satisfying.

And that's good news, because it sucks when a record is dismissed on the merits of what people want it to be, instead of what it is.

I'm looking forward to finding out what the rest of "Babel," is . . .


Hear the song on Youtube.

Avett Brothers "Live And Die"

I remember when Mumford And Sons broke through a couple of years ago, with their banjo-led rock-and-roots approach, I heard more than a few people say:

If I were The Avett Brothers, I'd be pretty irritated.

So here we are, over 2 years since "Sigh No More" and nearly 3 years since "I And Love And You," and The Avetts are on the verge of releasing a new album, and Mumford And Sons has a new one due in the September.

Both records stand to garner a lot of attention, press, airplay and ear-time.

I just can't think of a time when the banjo had the chance to move to the fore-front of music in such a way . . .


Hear the song on Youtube.

Jerry Douglas/Mumford & Sons "The Boxer"

This is a cover of the Simon & Garfunkel song "The Boxer" from the new Jerry Douglas album.

Douglas is a celebrated dobro player, and the album is chock-full of guest performers, who come in to sing and otherwise fill out the songs that feature his amazing slide/picking.

This track features the band Mumford & Sons, and yes, the distinctive vocals of Marcus Mumford are front and center.

The track is listed as "Jerry Douglas, featuring Mumford & Sons and Paul Simon."

Paul Simon?!?  Where?

Give a listen.  Can you pick out Simon's voice?  Or his guitar?

Is it a little weird to have an iconic legend like Paul Simon on a track, promote that he's on the track, but then relegate him to a place where his imprint doesn't register?

Or is he there and I don't hear it?


Hear the album version on Youtube.



Hear a live version of "The Boxer" on Youtube.

James Taylor "Lo And Behold"

Despite my claim that there are no new old songs, sometimes we do go looking for them.

How do you keep the station's library from stagnating? Well, the easiest thing to do is remove songs. If something is burned out, or if it has aged poorly, pull it out of rotation.

That's the simple solution, but it does alter the recipe. If you reduce the number of, say, songs from the 70s that mvyradio plays, you reduce the percentage of songs from the 70s that mvyradio plays.

And like a recipe, if you suddenly reduce the percentage of, say, carrots that you put into the soup, it ultimately alters the flavor.

So we will dip into an artist's catalog and see if there is anything we can bring into the library.

I recruited Barbara to help me look at James Taylor's 70s output, to see if we could improve the quality of JT tracks. Though he is one of the primary artists some people associate with the station, we actually only play a 1/2 dozen songs by Taylor at this point. Over the years, we've weeded out tracks. Time to, uh, weed in . . .

One of the simple things to do, was to look back at songs we used to play, to see if we could put anything back into rotation. We found a couple, though we also found some that were still burned, or still sounded too dated for mvyradio today.

The other thing to do (and this is why I needed Barbara), was too try to think about what tracks would stand out on the air, to anyone who owned the album.

In 1970, you (but not me, since I was only 1 year old) might have bought the "Sweet Baby James" album because of the song "Fire And Rain." But you probably listened to that record a whole lot over the years. So even if an album track wasn't a radio hit, if the album was popular, then the songs is going to be familiar to lots of folks/fans.

That's why you'll now hear "Lo And Behold" on mvyradio, added to rotation this week.

As we were doing this, it got me thinking about the future.

In 20 years time, will we be able to do this exercise for albums released in 2012?

Fewer and fewer people are listening to albums, as we move to a digital, "singles" musical culture. Some of the people who like Mumford And Sons, will only download "The Cave" and "Little Lion Man" without ever digging into the album to discover "Timshel."

Will a future radio station Music Director be able to pick up "Sigh No More" and ask the question, "What non-singles will people remember from this record?" and actually come up with something new to play? Probably not.

Mumford And Sons "Little Lion Man"

I remember hearing David Letterman talk about some city that he had only limited experience with. Maybe it was Cleveland. For the sake of the larger point, let's just say, Cleveland.

He was asking his guest about their home town, Cleveland, and he prefaced the question by saying that the only time he'd ever been to Cleveland, was as part of a flight with a lay-over, and for the hour or so he was there, the skies were very overcast.

Now, whenever he thought about Cleveland, he pictured it as a grey, overcast place. Of course, he knew that Cleveland isn't always grey and miserable, but that's what he saw in his head, because that was the full breadth of his experience.

If you only have one experience with something, it can lead you to extrapolate, incorrectly.

Back in the summer of 2010, we got a copy of the Mumford And Sons single "Little Lion Man." I hadn't really heard anything about them, other than they were gaining popularity and commercial radio was starting to pay attention to them.

I listened to the track a bunch of times, but we didn't have a full length record to check out, so my experience with Mumford And Sons started and ended with this track.

Okay, if they were an "It" band, that released a Rockin' track that drops and F-bomb in the chorus, well, I don't know. Good song. But is this just another generic "We rock" rock band that churns out generic rock songs that generic radio stations play so that non-discriminating rock fans can chant inane, "edgy" choruses while they drive to the office? I don't think I need to go out of my way to play that song . . .

I kept hearing about Mumford And Sons, and when the label sent out a second single, at the end of 2010, I listened. And listened. And listened again. And I pulled out the album.

These were not generic rock tracks. Hell, they weren't really rock tracks at all. Rockin' for sure. But Mumford And Sons was more about taking Folk in new directions. Songs featured the banjo for f's sake!

When I only knew "Little Lion Man," I was only able to imagine the album at 12 tracks just like that. I extrapolated, incorrectly.

I loved the second single, "The Cave." And the third single, "Roll Away Your Stone." And the full album. And when I heard the acoustic version of "Little Lion Man" I loved that.

And it turns out, the mvyradio listeners did too.

A record that we nearly passed over, turned out to be our #2 album of 2011.

Cleveland Rocks!


Hear the original version on Youtube.


Hear the acoustic version on Youtube.

Laura Marling "Roll Away Your Stone"

I have to admit, that even though today is the last day of voting for mvyradio's Top 25 Of 2011 . . . um, I haven't come up with my list yet.

Hey, I have until 5pm!

Off the top of my head though, two major favorites have been Mumford & Sons and Laura Marling. So how excited was I to find this version of Marling covering Mumford?!?

I hope you have a chance to vote today. We'll count down the winners on the week between Christmas and New Years.


Hear the song on Youtube.

Mumford & Sons "Roll Away Your Stone"

There are a couple of musical things that we have been adamant about, as parents.

One, is crummy kid music.

Perhaps surprisingly, it's my wife that has zero patience for twee tunes. With the exception of a Sesame Street album, we really don't play any music for our kids, that was created for kids alone.

Instead we've worked really hard to find music that was made for adults, that appeals to kids.

The Beatles is kid music. Abba is kid music. Michael Franti is kid music.

The other thing we have strongly encouraged is unselfconscious dancing. And that's because my wife is a great dancer, and because I am a terrible dancer. We want our kids to experience the joy of movement.

I lost that joy somewhere along the way.

When I was a little kid, my sister and I used to dance around the living room. The kid songs we had, were Showtunes. We'd jump and groove to "The Music Man" and "Fiddler On The Roof" and such. We'd swing with wild abandon, until . . . well, I'll get back to that in a second.

My wife and I have tried to recreate that scene in our living room, and we were having a blast recently, with Mumford & Sons.

I can't really say that lyrically, Mumford & Sons is kid music. But musically? Hell yeah.

I was holding my daughter, and my wife was holding my sons, and we started shuffling to "Roll Away Your Stone," sashaying from one end of the living room to the other.

Then that instrumental part, right after the chorus, hit. The part that makes you want to stamp your feet. Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump.

And that's what we did. We stomped our feet. Stomped from one end of the room to the other.

As the song built, so did out stomping.

STOMP. STOMP. STOMP. STOMP. STOMP. STOMP. STOMP. STOMP. STOMP.

Where I had been charging into the rhythm with abandon, I suddenly had a hesitation, and I stopped.

I stopped stomping. I stopped jumping.

Why?

I smiled when I realized what had made me want to stop:

I didn't want the record player to skip.

Back in the 1970s, when my sister and I were stomping along to "76 Trombones" like we were in a Sousa marching band, there was a point where you had to pull in the reins of your unrestrained thumps.

If you thumped too hard, the needle would jump off the record. Why, you could get bounced right back into "Goodnight My Someone" if you weren't careful.

So you had to tread lightly, pull back the reins, not dance with full abandon, in deference to the limitations of the phonograph player.

I can't say that this is solely the reason that I grew up to be a terrible dancer. But it was a pretty startling realization.

In the living room, with my daughter in my arms, I realized no matter how hard I stomped, that Mumford & Sons MP3 was not going to skip.

There was nothing holding me back.


See the video on Youtube.

Mumford & Sons "The Cave"

What's more "Country" sounding to you? A mandolin or a banjo?

My instinct would be to say, a banjo. You can slip a mandolin into a tasteful rock song (think "Losing My Religion") but you can't hide the twang of a banjo.

I wrote about Nickel Creek last week, and a friend from high school commented that it was strange that a progressive act like Nickel Creek never found the mass-appeal audience that Mumford & Sons is finding.

Why?

Both are great bands with great songs. And both are driven by instruments that are country-music-associated.

But only one band gets airplay on Modern Rock radio.

I can remember when this Mumford & Sons song song came in to mvy and we had decided we'd play it, but I did note that it was pretty remarkable that a song with a driving banjo was receiving widespread acceptance.

But how is it different, or "less country" than Nickel Creek?

I'm not sure, but I'll share my theory.

It's a simple guilt-by-association.

Nickel Creek came up from the bluegrass scene, shepherded by the likes of Alison Krauss. No matter how many Nirvana or Pavement covers they went on to do, they were always going to be a "Country" act.

Mumford & Sons is from the U.K. They aren't associated with American mainstream country in any way whatsoever.

And here's where we get to the prejudice.

Just as there are many people who won't listen to the Grateful Dead because of the culture of Deadheads, there are people who steadfastly won't listen to anything Country music, because of some of the stereotypes that Country is associated with.

So even a cool band like Nickel Creek, gets the cold shoulder.

But a cool band like Mumford & Sons, one that's foreign and dynamic and whatever, catches the attention of folks because they are unfettered by that blanket bologna.

Listen to both songs, and tell me which is more "Country."

And tonight, listen to mvy Live at 9pm, as we play the Chris Thile (formerly of Nickel Creek) and Michael Daves set from Newport Folk 2011, at 9pm ET. You can also hear the set on demand, or even download it at mvyradio's Newport Folk 2011 page.



See Mumford & Sons on Youtube.


See Nickel Creek on Youtube.