Mumford and Sons 'Sigh No More' (Island) Released 05/10/09

It was June 2008 when Fleet Foxes first nudged our hibernating harmony-led appetites into wakefulness. We rubbed the sleep from our eyes, applauded and sung without even needing to know all the words. As we feasted, life was good and with our appetites sated and winter approaching, we happily retreated back into hibernation.

But with the leaves on the tress signalling the passing of yet another year, the harmonies are back; question is, are we ready for more or less of the same? An album that induces déjà vu by coincidence rather than design, its necessary to first strip away rather than wax lyrical about all that’s great, good and given with Mumford and Sons’ debut ‘Sigh No More’, the high standards of which are not in doubt, in order to form a well rounded opinion.

Dishing out audible comparisons between musical contemporaries, however valid, can prove tiresome and predictable, but there is more than an undeniable whiff of Fleet Foxes about the English four-piece, a whiff that could have you pulling frantically on your earlobe while attempting to hum verbatim as an unconscious segway occurs in much the same way as when the theme to Superman blurs into that of Star Wars.

Although the core abundance of stripped back acoustics, freight train banjos, improvised percussion and harmony led vocals create immediate intimacy, ‘The Cave’ and ‘Winter Winds’ alongside the title track point directly to a band with their own set of sustainable ideas, those that thrive in that strange no mans land where the subtle annoyances of pop rock integrity and guilty pleasures of domesticated pop rock coexist in a world without musical snobbery.

As cathartic as rousing ‘White Blank Page’, ‘I Gave You All’, ‘Little Lion Man’ and ‘Dust Bowl Dance’ point to an album built on solid polished foundations and to an extent cinematic aspirations, the focus of which so practise perfect it in many ways separates them from their contemporaries who from now on will remain nameless, but who in nostalgic hindsight didn’t completely cap and crown a return to nature through male four part harmonies as Mumford and Sons stunning debut proves.