Mumford & Sons
Babel
Mr Agreeable , November 20th, 2012
Here's a f***ing weather report. Right now, we live in the f***ing piss torrents of a perma-f***ing c***shower and in such a f***ing world, conditions have deteriorated to the f***ing point where f***ing Mumford And Sons can get to reach Number f***ing one on both sides of the f***ing Atlantic, with their faux, "Golly, wouldn't it be jolly to be poor, capering around the junkyard wearing neckerchiefs and being authentic" chic. Who buys this septic f***ing horseshit? Presumably the same f***ing thought-averse smegmaheads who drool about "Boris" being a bloody great bloke who we should make bloody Prime Minister because it'd be a bloody laugh. Docile f***ing wanktards!
Well, here's their latest f***ing album. And I have to admit, I'm surprised. I imagined it would represent the listening equivalent of scraping around the tenth circle of Satan's own anus with a f***ing mandolin plectrum – but actually, it's more like the f***ing twentieth. It is a growth on the left bollock of the testicles of f***ing pop. It is a rancified f***ing perversion of all that has gone under the name of folk. It is an obscenity ten times the magnitude of a bunch of f***ing public school drunks stealing a busker's cap and instrument as he strums away on the f***ing underground, poncing off with it and making £200 in an hour from passers by with their strolling f***ing renditions of Ralph McTell's 'Streets Of London'.
The vocals we can deal with in a f***ing sentence. Remember the f***ing old man shouting "HaROLD!!!" in Steptoe and Son? That, only ten times more f***ing whiney and self-pityingly parasitic. As for the instrumental arrangements, well, shit as the f***ing countryside is, they make it sound even worse with their f***ing nostalgia-for-rickets stylings – a thousand county fairs from Hellhole-On-The-Wold rolled into one, with cowshit redolence of f***ing yokels shoving f***ing greased pigs down the hill or racing their f***ing ramshackle, unroadworthy vehicles round barns steering with their f***ing toes!
Scrape all that dried out mucus-excrescence away, however, and what you're actually left with is, of all things, f***ing U2. Basically, it's a piece of piss for any foursome of gormlessly ambitious morons to make a f***ing mint in this day and age – whack in a few tremulously morose verses, then crank it right up for the f***ing chorus with some vaguely anthemic resolution in which the words "I will" invariably figure. Exhibit f***ing A! 'Ghosts That We Knew'. "I will hold on with all my might / Just that we'll be all right." (Of course you'll be all right, you rich c***s). Exhibit B! 'Hopeless Wanderer'. "I will call you by name / I will share your road." Oh, you'll agree to be seen in the f***ing street with me and address me by my f***ing name? Mighty f***ing big of you, banjo boy. Exhibit C! 'Holland Road'. "When I'm on my knees / I will still believe... If you'll still believe, I'll still believe". Exhibit D: 'I Will Wait'. They're constantly making out they're living in some hurricane ravaged f***ing shack on the edge of the woods and recasting their f***ing horniness as some sort of f***ing physical f***ing heroism! F***, if we needed that, we'd listen to absolutely everything f***ing Bruce Springsteen has ever recorded!
This po-faced, gale force f***ing guff is meant to have us punching the air but all it makes you want to punch is their f***ing faces, followed by a low one to their corduroy-clad f***ing bollocks! It's as empty as their f***ing bank accounts, monstrously, are f***ing not. "Let's live while you're young." What the f*** else are we supposed to do when we're young? Die under a hail of f***ing custards pies packed with ball bearings, as we f***ing wish you would?
It f***ing looks bad when a bunch of f***ing already well-to-do, poor-people-parodying arseheads are what laughingly passes for "indie" in this benighted f***ing day and age. But you know what? Even the f***ing clothheaded, social network addled, tight trousered, bumfluffed f***faces who pass for Britain's youth are eventually gonna wake up to how they're being f***ing financially screwed over by that top-hatted tossface Cameron and his retinue of incompetent, f***ing anus-faced public school fags. And when they do, f***ing Mumford And Sons are gonna be the first people the baying mob goes after. First, they'll take the f***ing fat one, shave off his f***ing pubic obscenity of a f***ing beard and stuff the clippings down his fatuous f***ing throat till he chokes. Then they'll take the rest of them and f***ing garrotte them one by one with their own f***ing banjo strings. In the name of all that's f***ing godly and c***ing decent and just, this has to f***ing happen! This f***ing afternoon! Do it! C***s!