Laura Marling And Mumford And Sons Live Review
iTunes Festival - London Roundhouse 09/07/10
With the popularity of UK folk music rapidly rising it was no surprise to find Camden’s Roundhouse packed to capacity as Laura Marling and Mumford and Sons headlined Friday night’s iTunes Festival.
Laura Marling got the night underway in typically low-key style, playing a mixture of beautiful songs from her first and second albums, including the haunting Blackberry Stone and I Speak Because I Can.
The softly spoken star was clearly frustrated by wavering attention from the chattering crowd even stopping to ask if they ‘could maybe keep the talking to a lower level?’ which they seemed to heed accordingly.
Mumford and Sons kicked off their set with the title track of their hugely popular debut album, Sigh No More, and proceeded to thrash their way through most of the record with vigour. The biggest cheer of the night went to the up-tempo Little Lion Man, which was met with rapturous applause from the crowd.
After closing their set with The Cave, Mumford and Sons returned to the stage with Laura Marling and the Rajasthani folk collective Dharohar Project to perform a series of collaborative tracks.
The crowd reacted warmly to the group effort which included Indian tinged re-versioning’s of both Marling’s Devil’s Spoke and Mumford's To Darkness and seemed to confirm that the folk invasion won’t be coming to an end anytime soon.
The iTunes Festival continues at Camden’s Roundhouse until July 31st.