I have never felt greatly inclined to grow a beard myself. (Not that I could ever manage the full naval Prince Michael of Kent. A rather precious goatee would probably be the limit of my facial hair-growing powers, and the contumely and derision it would surely attract from all right-thinking people obviously rule that out.) But pop music has recently entered one of its occasional beardie phases, as folk music not only gains new popularity, but also comes right back into fashion, on both sides of the Atlantic.
In the US we have such bands as Midlake discarding the soft-rock stylings of their first album to go way down deep into late-1960s British folk-rock. We have The Decemberists, a wonderfully odd and uncompromising band, with their strange blend of prog rock and acoustic gloomy storytelling folk (people in their songs are always about to be keelhauled, it seems to me). And in this country we have such acts as Mumford & Sons, whose slightly whiny indie-folk suddenly presses everyone’s buttons, to the extent that they were not only nominated for this year’s Mercury Prize (some sort of folk performers usually are, just for show) but might even have won.
A majority of record buyers still alive missed the previous Folk Revival in the 1960s, so we now have our own Folk Revival Revival. And a wonderful thing it is, too.
Why now? What’s it all about? It’s tempting to say that a Conservative(ish) government might have something to do with it. Folk is traditionally, and often fiercely, left-wing. Listen to Mike Harding’s folk hour on Radio 2 on Wednesday early evenings (as I often do) and you will hear, unadorned, the stern and unwavering voice of the politicised common man.
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