A review of Mumford & Son's "The Cave"
John C.A. Manley | April 20, 2024
“You should check out Mumford & Sons,” she said.
“That sounds like the name of a British accounting firm,” I replied.
This was a few weeks ago. I was talking to one of the staff at our local bakery. This is the same shop I wrote about in January where I was introduced to the Icelandic band Of Monsters and Men. Well, Mumford & Sons is another folk-rock cult sensation that sits on the fringe of popular music.
Fast forward to last weekend: I was down with a cold, heating up the infrared sauna for a long sweat and needed some music. I decided it was time to check out her Mumford & Sons recommendation. I purchased their first album and ran the headphones into the sauna.
By the time I reached the second song, the tears were flowing faster than the sweat. While the song “Little Lion Man” seems to be their most famous, “The Cave” hit me the hardest — in particular these lines from the chorus:
But I will hold on hope
And I won't let you choke
On the noose around your neck
And I'll find strength in pain
And I will change my ways
I'll know my name as it's called again
That summed up my marriage: holding onto hope, trying to stop the type-1 diabetic noose around Nicole’s neck from choking her. When we first met the doctors said she had four years to live. Twenty years later, we had beaten their mortality prognostications. But by then there were two more nooses around her neck (kidney failure and anemia).
I highly recommend giving “The Cave” a listen. Marcus Mumford sings with such vulnerability and the band's wide range of instruments is truly symphonic— it’s really hard to believe they're a British accounting firm.
For a follow-up to “The Cave,” check out the “Magic” music video I created for Nicole (with permission from Ben Folds Five) at 33 minutes into the video of her memorial service.Photo credit: Mumford & Sons, performing at Aviemore, Scotland in 2015 by Stefan Schäfer, Lich (Wikimedia Commons 2 August 2015, 09:19:04).
John C. A. Manley is the author of Much Ado About Corona: A Dystopian Love Story, the forthcoming All The Humans Are Sleeping and other works of speculative fiction. Get free samples of his stories by becoming a Blazing Pine Cone email subscriber at: https://blazingpinecone.com/subscribe/
