Linger in the dark for too long and the cold hands of Mumford and Sons will cup your ears. Good People, a shock new single from the band which grabbed the throat of Britain for a singular summer, teamed with Pharrell Williams of all people for their return to the public eye. They are banjoless, thoughtless and lacking in every fibre of their once creative being. The Lumineers but with a contingency for suffering. Good People they are not, would be the cop-out claim to make. But this shallow piece from the stomp and holler hell they create is worth more than a scoff and a slap. Mumford and Sons, paired with Williams, is another shining terror of how grim and dull alternative pop music wannabes can be.
Five years since their last release – much has changed to the world around Mumford and Sons but not the band itself. People still listen in to those charmless and sudden movements from a group whose folksy mentality is now coupled with Louis Vuitton shows. Good People made its debut there and the band is so out of step with what their image once was, it is startling to hear them try and revive it. A three-minute void which immediately dispels its acoustic introduction and turns into a chant more commonly heard by the failed districts in The Hunger Games. It feels very in tune with the Olivia Rodrigo piece released for The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes though has no heart to it, instead a constant, wooden thump which Williams backs as being a “revelation”.
Autobiographical platitudes are made almost immediately. This idea of shaking off fatigue and leaping back into the great unknown as though Mumford and Sons could ever die off as a forgotten relic. No such luck. Poor shakings and a rip of the opening to Let’s Dance from David Bowie as those backing vocals rise and rise, cut off abruptly by a pathetic, obvious momentum. They explore the sun rising and use the great ball of fire to market a return of a band whose one hit felt like a shoo-in for Autumnal Waitrose adverts. It does not take a detective to join the two dots available to Mumford and Sons, whose return is heralded by the band, but nobody else, as a surefire way to save music. Good People holds a primitive structure, rhyming “tired” and “inspired” as they try and mount some move away from the brink of death. With the help of hindsight, it is hard to see Mumford and Sons as anything more than an embarrassing mark on a dark few years for British music. Good People cements this.
Still, Good People will tickle the fancy of those who need the padded walls of chart music to guide them. Mumford and Sons have here a song which would have been favourable a decade ago, right around the time Williams was still engaging with artists of interest. Good People is the equivalent of wandering in to see a pub band trial an original rather than covers of The Pogues as all good groups should. Insufferably dull and disconnected, the band hopes they can pick up the steam of their 2009 heyday and ignore their previous half-decade of work. While testing the waters for a new album, Mumford and Sons fall headfirst into a boiling vat of bubbling spit, their simplicity in motion throughout this song a firm example of why they dropped off in the first place.
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