Mumford & Sons and British actor Idris Elba have teamed up for the video to the band’s song “Lover of the Light.”
Shot in and around the Pembrokeshire countryside in Wales, this short film marks the Golden Globe winning actor’s directorial debut, in which he also stars. Co-directed with acclaimed scriptwriter Dan Cadan and produced by @radical.media, the video merges together two separate ideas that originally came from both Mumford & Sons and Idris.
A live DVD by the band, The Road To Red Rocks, is released on the January 22 through Glassnote Records.
The band have also announced additional upcoming tour dates in the United States, playing a handful of shows in February 2013. Tickets go on sale at 10am on Friday 9 November via http://www.ticketmaster.com/.
Tuesday Feb 5th – TD Garden, Boston MA
Wednesday Feb 6th – Barclays Center, New York NY
Wednesday Feb 13th – Patriot Center, Fairfax VA
Saturday Feb 16th – Susquehanna Bank Center, Camden NJ
Yesterday, UK based band Mumford & Sons revealed their newest single, “I Will Wait” via Youtube. People can listen to the new track at the link below, noting that this video is not the official music video for the song.
“I Will Wait” is the first single from the band’s anticipated sophomore album Babel, due out will be released through Glassnote Records on September 25, 2012. It is produced by Markus Dravs.? ?The album is currently available to pre-order through the band’s website.??Babel follows the 2010 release of Mumford & Sons’ debut album, Sigh No More.
Mumford & Sons have announced details of a series of Gentlemen of the Road Stopovers in the United States this August.
The Stopovers combine the intimacy of a community celebration with the excitement of a world-class music festival. Featuring local vendors and activities, each Stopover will begin with a concert at a unique site and end with a series of smaller events involving local businesses, venues, and, most importantly, local people. Mumford & Sons will headline the main event, alongside an eclectic and energetic roster of artists curated by the band themselves.
These one-day, outdoor events will take place in four carefully-selected and unique locations across America, including the Eastern Promenade in Portland, ME; downtown Bristol, VA/TN; Page Park in Dixon, IL; and the legendary Fairgrounds in Monterey, CA.
Tickets to the Stopovers will be $69, with no additional service fees. Each ticket will include a beautifully designed commemorative Gentlemen of the Road Stopover Passport, and an exclusive digital download compilation album featuring performances taken from various acts across the four shows. Tickets for the Portland, Bristol, and Monterey Stopovers will go on sale Friday, June 1 at 10am local time. The Dixon Stopover will go on sale Saturday, June 9 at 10am CT. Tickets for all Stopovers will be available exclusively at gentlemenoftheroad.com. A very limited quantity of $59 early-bird tickets will be available for each site on a first-come, first-served basis.
Dates are below:
August 4 – Gentlemen of the Road Stopover In Portland, ME (The Eastern Promenade) – Mumford & Sons + St. Vincent, Dawes, The Maccabees, Apache Relay, Simone Felice, Haim
August 11 – Gentlemen of the Road Stopover In Bristol, VA/TN (Off State Street in Downtown Bristol) – Mumford & Sons + Dawes, JEFF The Brotherhood, The Very Best, Justin Townes Earle, Apache Relay, Simone Felice, Haim
August 18 – Gentlemen of the Road Stopover In Dixon, IL (Page Park) – Mumford & Sons + Gogol Bordello, Dawes, Abigail Washburn, The Very Best, Apache Relay, Haim
August 25 – Gentlemen of the Road Stopover In Monterey, CA (Monterey County Fairgrounds) – Mumford & Sons + Gogol Bordello, The Very Best, Grouplove, Two Gallants, Apache Relay, Haim
After two full days of the Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival, even the grass was tired. It started to die after the consistent trample of 85,000 eager music fans survived, subsisted, consumed, danced, defecated and utterly thrived on it while the muggy, dusty Tennessee weekend wore on.
My Friday report actually ended with the Arcade Fire set which ended shortly after midnight. So essentially, Saturday’s music at Bonnaroo began then. Let’s begin there.
Cruising around backstage and relaxing in a rare outdoor lounge environment for “special people” such as journalists like this one, trying to find my face after Arcade Fire took it with them, the pulsing sounds of Lil’ Wayne made their way to my eardrums. From behind the Which Stage, I could hear but not make out all of his vocals until we stepped around front and saw what to me was unoriginal rap. It didn’t offer much to me at that point, a lot of antics, cursing, degrading women and did I mention cursing? What the fuck?! Damn, this kid is strong. Big ol’ biceps on this guy! And they’re covered with tattoos. Wait, he must be a musician! I did not care for what he has to offer but I’d certainly give it another shot.
I didn’t stay for long at Wayne’s set, also opting to stay far away from the womping bass thunder coming from across the field at the This Tent derived by the asshat that is Bassnectar. Not. A. Fan. Too loud, too selfish, too many drugs required; Bassnectar makes tons of money ripping off other people’s music and drowning it in beats, and utterly overproduced bass swirl and noise.
However much you think I hate electronic music, you’re wrong. I had been looking forward to the late-night set of solo DJ/producer Pretty Lights for awhile. His set was supposed to start at 2 am; it didn’t until after 2:30. While he uses other people’s music to launch digitized and heavily produced sounds, I felt that Pretty Lights pressed buttons in enough order and rhythm to come up with an amazing show, without it cannibalizing the artist’s intention but rather shifting it. I was on my feet and present at Bonnaroo “Friday night” until after 5 am when the sun was coming up at Pretty Lights’ set. In the middle of his 3-hour melee, I ditched back to This Tent for a quick peek at the “Shpongle Presents the Shpongletron Experience” (easily the longest and lamest band name), which is essentially yet another DJ spinning grooves and laying down the sonic bloom for tripping, rolling and other drug-filled bodies.
Pretty Lights at Bonnaroo
So “Friday” comes to an end a quarter of the way through Saturday. Needless to say, “Saturday” didn’t start for me in the concert bowl until around 4 pm, taking in Alison Krauss & Union Station featuring Jerry Douglas. Her angelic, buttery voice first came to my lucky ears in 1994 just outside of Nashville when I saw her sit in with Phish to quadruple their singing talent. I was in love. My sonic love affair with Alison Krauss has gone on for nearly twenty years and luckily we will be seeing her continue to make amazing music into the future. Her show to 15,000 faithful was no different. Battling intense heat and zero cloud cover, just being out of doors in Manchester, TN, this day was a workout. Everyone around me was sweating. The music was hot. Dobro genius Jerry Douglas offered a virtuosic match to Krauss’s subtle and soft melodies on vocals and fiddle. A big fan of Mr. Douglas, I had forgotten one of his signature solo tunes would likely come out during the set. He blessed the crowd with a purely soulful and fantastic rendition of “Little Martha,” the only song Duane Allman ever wrote.
The heat took me over and I needed to move, so took my tired legs to catch Portugal. The Man over at That Tent. They had some upbeat, rockin’ tunes and driving basslines keeping it all together. They definitely rocked but didn’t stand out. I thought I took a picture to help me remember their sound. But they were a very tight ensemble, it’s just that you have to understand, the schedule is packed! (Look at this Saturday schedule of entertainment!) A lot was going on, but I did make a point to see them based on my Ghettoblaster editor’s recommendation. And on my way to see another recommendation, !!!, I swung by the-most-packed-I’ve-ever-seen Which Stage as the Mumford & Sons serenaded an audience of no less than 40,000 with their hoedown acoustic rock. What is the buzz all about? I didn’t get it or make time to stick around; I wanted to see smaller bands doing things more intimate. This Mumford crowd was insane.
!!! was fantastic!!! Wait, who? There? No, This Tent! Which? !!!.
The established band offered a throbbing and danceable show with an incredibly enigmatic lead singer dousing the crowd with somewhat lewd dance moves. He reminded me of Richard Simmons meets Mick Jagger with all of his air kisses, body groping and the groping of his female counterpart offering up vocals and other antics. I especially enjoyed their set because the room to move within a larger personal space was provided by more than half the fucking festival going to Mumford & Sons. I would certainly pay to see !!! when they come around. I was completely intrigued!
While The Black Keys were set to start over at the largest What Stage, hunger began to set in as I realized I am human. Must. Eat. Avoid. Dust.
Grabbing dinner at the Food Truck Oasis, I ordered a cheeseburger from an unnamed Kansas City food truck. Fantastic burger, one of the best in recent memory; it was coated with swiss and had a special sauce that was chipotle-based in oil which offered a sweet tang and kick. So glad to have stopped after I met the burger to grab a pic.
Been a busy day already, huh? With the stages so spread out, I couldn’t hoof it to Black Keys. Sorry white keys and black keys, it just wasn’t in the cards. I opted to go to the more rare offering of Parliament/Funkadelic founder/bassist, Booty Collins & The Funk University, adjacent to the food trucks. Hundreds of feet versus thousands of feet. I went and waited for Bootsy to start. And wait we did. He didn’t start until 30 minutes after the time he was supposed to end! But it was epic. In selecting this Choose Your Own Adventure, we missed the majority of the highly anticipated set from hippie songweavers Buffalo Springfield. I was okay with it. Bootsy’s set frikkin’ rocked!
The set was filled with flair and pomp, from modern R&B cheese out to thick, layered funk dense with Bootsy’s tasty bass chocolate driving the sweet grooves home. The one and only Kareem Abdul Jabbar was on stage at Bootsy’s Universe, which seemed to add a neat celebrity element to what felt like a private party. The dwindled-yet-faithful crowd was one tenth the size it was before the extensive delay that eventually prompted the pissed-off festival goers to literally chant in unison “Bullshit Bullshit Bullshit” in regards to the delay. We funked it up as much as our legs could possibly funk knowing that the night still had 6+ hours remaining.
A march to Buffalo Springfield to say I saw it followed. We got to see (most folks mostly watch the jumbotrons at the two biggest stages) Neil Young and Stephen Stills reunite and rip it up with the original lineup to this ancient band. They ripped it hardcore for old guys. Young’s stage presence ensures he’ll never get old. Yes, they played the hit. It was good. They played “Keep on Rockin’ in the Free World” and it made me thankful I wasn’t alive in the 1960s. Music today is so powerful.
America-centric thinking is far too easy a habit for us stateside music fans to adopt, but the influence of our brothers across the Atlantic in the great United Kingdom should not be overlooked. Join us as we dig into the best that Britain has to offer.
Does anyone really care who wins at this month’s NME Awards bash in London? Little more than an annual opportunity for the flailing print magazine to hype the bands it hopes will sell copies, it’s long lost the aura of importance it once had. In the era of blogosphere-fueled success stories, the very notion of an awards ceremony feels painfully dated. We already know who everyone rates. We read the blogs, subscribe to the feeds, chat on Twitter and hook up on Facebook. By the time the “Best New Band” are drunkenly clutching their statuette we’ll have already moved on to the next.
So what about this year’s candidates? In the aforementioned “Best New Band” category, The Big Pink, Bombay Bicycle Club, Mumford & Sons, The xx and La Roux feel like they’ve been around for ages. In the case of The Big Pink and Bombay Bicycle Club, it’s hard to appreciate that their debut albums are only a matter of months old, such has been the extent of online hype surrounding them. Between the two of them, The xx and La Roux have dominated the last year in British music, hitting heights far beyond anything that could have been achieved before the advent of the internet.
