Mumford & Sons - Babel
As is customary with alternative musicians suddenly faced with overwhelming success, the UK critical press and online community tore into the Mumford & Sons' debut Sigh No More. Recoiling in horror at their absence of cool and their history as somewhat privileged gentlemen dressed in tweed, one half of us dismissed them as poshos with banjos. The more articulate criticisms came from their simplistic songwriting and abundance of love and romance in folk music, a genre taken to far more political and weighty extremes by other contemporaries that your average Pitchfork-reading Guardianista would much prefer get the success (Look, guys, Laura Marling won a BRIT award so let's all just show some bloody solidarity okay? Baby steps.)
So the Mumford and the Marshall and the Dwane and the Lovett buggered off to America. Fair dos. Since, they've performed with Bob Dylan at the Grammys and achieved the fastest-selling album of the year. It wasn't even close: their 600,000 records sold over there far eclipsed Justin Bieber's 374,000 (but has since been thoroughly demolished by Taylor Swift's 1.2 million). So why, Amurika, the big fuss?
If Sigh No More was full to the brim with tunes, Babel starts off worryingly. Its title track is their typical shouty mountains-and-winds-and-crashing-waves moment, and quite predictably builds and suddenly falls silent, all feeling a little bit am-dram. The lyrics grow a touch ludicrous on the appropriately melodramatic title 'Whispers in the Dark': "fingers tap into what you were once/ I'm worried that I blew my only chance" and there's again little musically that's resembling anything profound or engaging. First single 'I Will Wait' does well to reduce the pomposity and just puts across a simple, cute chorus that's pretty easy to relate to for anyone. The tune's not their strongest, but it gets the job done. Similarly endearing is the choked up 'Holland Road' and its refrain of "you cut me down" - throwing up further lyrical ambiguities (is it about infidelity? Drug addiction? Religion?).
They occasionally parody themselves, though - the thoroughly bland 'Ghosts That we Knew' is all quiet piano chords and a jumble of lyrics dealing with depression and angst, and the terrible line "they gave me such a fright" rather douses what could've been a powerful song. By 'Lover of the Light' all hope is given up of a return of an amazing song in the same vein as Little Lion Man or The Cave, but for the time being this is a nice, inoffensive substitute. Whether or not these songs will endure in the same sense that a band's debut album, and all that goes with the buzz and excitement of a new band does, remains to be seen. For the most part, though, album #2 follows the same pattern, and there are some fruitful results: 'Lovers' Eyes' is far and away the most compelling lament (opening "Love was kind for a time/ But now just aches and makes me blind"), and backed by their least-forced 'epic' moment. 'Reminder', at 2:05, is probably ideal in length and sentimentality to grab a centrepiece Christmas advertisement, but doesn't really grab any attention here.
The pianos introducing 'Hopeless Wanderer' have a touch of Yann Tiersen about them, which is always a good thing. The abundance, though, of loud attempts at an epic towards the end of the album will probably be the deciding factor on whether or not fans (and newcomers) like Babel; to me, they become irritating. 'Broken Crown' is about a key change away from unleashing the hounds of hell, and poised with so much bluster that, were I more insensitive, I'd make a hurricane Sandy reference. Much more restrained is 'Below My Feet', and it and 'No More Haste' kind of redeem all of those gale-force assaults.
Rating: 6.5/10
Highlights: Holland Road, Lovers' Eyes, I Will Wait, Below My Feet, Hopeless Wanderer
Avoid: Ghosts That we Knew, Whispers in the Dark, Babel
Artwork Watch: "Fuck, man! It's just so quaint!" an American screams in Target as he slams it on the till.
Up next: Alphabeat
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