“Winter Winds” by Mumford & Sons, Friday, January 19, 2024

 

Mumford & Sons changed the direction of alternative music. As Stephen Christian of Anberlin once lamented, the direction of the genre had been pushing heavier and heavier music until the year when Mumford came onto the scene, Alternative shifted to folk sounds. The band fronted by Marcus Mumford swept the scene when they re-leased Sigh No More in 2009, with a sound that crossed over to Billboard’s Hot 100. The plucking sounds of banjos and mandolins may have sounded refreshing on the radio to late ‘00 ears, but when WatchMojo.com compiled a list of bands whose songs sound the same, Mumford earned an honorable mention. The band would eventually break with the formula, but Sigh No More showcases Mumford’s signature sound.

AS THE WINTER WINDS LITTER LONDON… “Winter Winds” was Mumford and Sons’ second single. The song was overshadowed by the band’s first single, “Little Lion Man.” On an album that sounds fairly the same, “Winter Winds” stood out most to me. Musically, the band slows down their tempo and adds a trumpet, creating almost a mariachi band sound. Lyrically, the song feels honest in a less abstract way than the band’s bigger hit from the album. Telling a story of loneliness and a hookup, the song takes a peek into the songwriter’s soul. The longing for love is existential: the speaker feels distant from everyone even in his hometown. It reminds him about his early experience with religion: “Oh, the shame that sent me away from the God that I once loved.” According to lead singer Marcus Malcom, the song is about being alone around Christmas in his hometown of London. Longing for a human connection, he turned to meaningless sex, but his soul is longing for something deeper. 

WAS IT LOVE OR THE FEAR OF THE COLD THAT LED US THROUGH THE NIGHT?  Praised by Plugged In, with the exception of the f-bomb on “Little Lion Man,” Mumford & Sons’ Sigh No More tends to be easily digestible to Christian audiences. The conservative publication even praised “Winter Winds” for trying to “suss out life’s meaning by looking at it from the perspective of death,” referring to the last verse of the song. Last week, when I was encountering the great city of London for the first time, I, too, couldn’t help but think about how finite we are. As I stood in the 1000+ year-old city, looking at the tombs of monarchs and poets in Westminster Abbey, I thought about how many generations had come and gone before I could stand in that spot. I thought about how an American of some English descent could travel from his working place where he and his partner reside—South Korea—to stand in the first empire on earth that could boast “where the sun doesn’t set.” And from that time, the world felt much older than I had ever expected. Now I could only imagine if I was feeling that way, all alone at Christmastime in the magnificent city. I’d probably be on Grindr to put that feeling in perspective!

Read the lyrics on Genius.