Mumford and Sons – Winter Winds (Island)
4/5
By: Samuel Smith
After the off-the-blocks-sprint success of debut album Sigh No More – an album of rare, relaxed intensity – the Mumford boys are slowing things down a little with new single ‘Winter Winds’, a rustic sway of trumpets, mandolin and double bass that swoops and builds through a dynamic parabola. The track balances carefully atop the needle-thin line between overt grandiosity and tender subtlety, beginning with a melodic burst of trumpets and country-esque foot-stomp drums that quickly drop down to just a mandolin, allowing singer Marcus Mumford’s gently cracking voice to sit centre stage. The song’s central melody breathes and sighs like its namesake, expanding and contracting like the inhalation of a huge pair of musical lungs, “was it love or fear of the cold that led us through the night?” is sung over the slow build of trumpets and toe-tapped-tambourines, building to a chin up, hands-on chest kind of man-chorus.
The band do have an occasional tendency to stumble into over-exuberant ostentatiousness, such as during a middle-eight crescendo when the trumpets rise like an outdated military call to arms, however Marcus’ knack for the sideways, meaningful lyric, pulls things back into a more private perspective. The Movember sponsored singer has a talent for grouping words together in a way that wash subtly over you - “and my head told my heart let love grow/but my heart told my head this time no...” - catching at the edges of your consciousness, pulling one corner of your tight-lipped mouth up in a slow smile that spreads to your chest and down into your stomach like a glass of mulled wine.
Similarly, Markus Drav’s production (Arcade Fire, Bjork) swells proudly like a returning soldier’s chest. While on some of the album the huge caves of reverb can swamp the recording, leaving you unsure whether you’re hearing a new voice or echoing tail of the last line, this track keeps things nice and close (mostly), allowing the instrumentation to wrap the listener in blankets of audio. This song sounds like bonfire lit talks on a freezing autumn day, wrapped up in a duffel coat, a huge woollen scarf and fingerless gloves, blowing gingerly on near frostbitten fingers. Well, it might not conjure up that exact image for you, but that’s the empirical beauty of a track like ‘Winter Winds’, music should evoke something, anything; whether it be a memory or an imagined future; a friend you should call or a family member you never have; it allows you to just detach yourself and let your imagination swim off down a frosted, tree-fringed river.
You can watch the Mumford chaps performing ‘Winter Winds’ alongside other tracks, including first single ‘Little Lion Man’, at a close, personal gig for us at the Rockfeedback offices below:
Artists in this article: Mumford and Sons
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