I caught up with Daughter #1 yesterday and quizzed her about the item. She reckoned that the popularity of the song amongst her peers is probably due to the banjo; she reckons that most of them have never heard or seen a banjo before, and the phrase "the banjo was really awesome" seems to be applied to them rather often.

Now, Daughter #1 has been going to the National (and to Nariel) since she was born and has experienced some seriously good players of a variety of banjo styles in a variety of genres so I suspect she isn't overawed by the playing in the Mumford & Son piece but that's how her peers have appreciated it. I suspect the fact that the keyboard is the only 'nonacoustic' instrument in the lineup in the clip has also influenced the under30s in a positive direction; I suspect they must have seen video clips to discern the lack of amp leads but it is possible they were really listening hard and got that message purely aurally.

And, for Geoff's benefit, I'm not disowning or actively savaging anything that gets popular play. I'm surprised that Little Lion Man even made it into the top 100 of Triple J's repertoire, let alone got to #1. As a performance it didn't move me, either as "folk" or as "Indie" music; this might be because my background in many genres (especially "folk", "trad" etc etc and excepting really modern indie music) has been broad and deep.

Cheers, Rowan