I didn’t come to ‘Wilder Mind’ as a hater, though Mumford and Sons are indeed one of the most hated bands out there. That’s to be expected, they are also one of the most popular, and popularity breeds contempt. But personally I find it hard to hate the banjo, the instrument which up until now has been synonymous with Mumford and Sons, and I also find it hard to hate a bunch of hard working, and by all accounts lovely, lads who make inoffensive and sometimes rather nice folk-rock. So this isn’t going to be the trashing that Mumford and Sons have often been on the receiving end of. I like ‘Wilder Minds’ a lot more than I was expecting, and a lot more than the score below suggests. I like it in spite of its massive and obvious flaws. I am aware that all the melodies sound identical. I am aware that the song structures are astonishingly repetitive and predictable. I like it despite all the cliches, both musical and lyrical, on display. I probably like it more than you, the music fan who seeks out reviews on obscure indie blogs, and I probably like it less than the millions of people around the globe who will send it to number one this week.
The big hook with ‘Wilder Minds’ is that Mumford and Sons have ditched the banjo and gone rock. Of course they haven’t really ‘gone’ rock, in fact they’ve changed virtually nothing except they now plug their instruments in, which is to say they’ve always been a rock band in 19th century clothing. It’s the kind of ‘rock’ that I usually can’t stand; over produced, melodramatic, reverby, anthemic, sluggish, overbearingly masculine, whiney and very, very white. Think U2, Simple Minds, Bon Jovi or Kings of Leon. The thing is, I may find those bands repellent much of the time (actually, I really like Kings of Leon), but equally I am aware that when you are in the middle of a field or Stadium, and there are thousands of people singing along to a song you somehow know all the words to, this type of music can be overwhelmingly powerful. And it’s in that situation that Mumford and Sons are already very successful. And so surely ‘Wilder Mind’ is going to be a consolidation of power? A leap in the direction they’ve always been heading in?
Well it is and it isn’t. As I say, there is very little that is actually different about this album from the other two, once you get over the fact there is no banjo. The chords are the same, the melodies sound similar, the lyrics deal with the same things and they are structured in the same way. Don’t let the leather jackets fool you; Mumford and Sons are still Mumford and Sons.
So it comes down to the strength of the songwriting and whether that will be enough to differentiate ‘Wilder Mind’ from ‘Sigh No More’ and ‘Babel’. In that department Mumford and Sons have received little acclaim from critics, but in response to that argument I’m sure they’d simply hold up their platinum discs, Brits and Grammy awards. Or maybe they’d pass you on to the massive crowd who watched them headline Glastonbury a couple of years ago. Are you going to tell them Mumford and Sons can’t write a stirring song? So lets assume that they are good songwriters, and that ‘Roll Away Your Stone’, ‘I Will Wait’, ‘The Cave’ etc were hits for a reason. Is anything here going to replace them in the setlist? Probably not. The songwriting is consistently good but never anything more.
The two singles ‘Believe’ and ‘The Wolf’ strain in all the right directions but sound exactly that. Strained. They wrestle to squeeze all the right emotions out of the choruses but I never feel hooked in. Better is album opener ‘Tompkins Square Park’ which feels genuinely heartfelt and has a skyscraping, sing along chorus. ‘Ditmus’, one of many songs that deal with the dying days of a relationship, is equally moving. These are they type of songs that on paper read as trite, cliched gobbledygook, but when sung aloud by a large audience make you briefly believe that heartbreak can be cured in a three and a half minute pop song.
Over twelve tracks the Mumford and Sons formula is tested to breaking point. The tempo barely changes, and one song melts into another all too discretely. Ask me to hum one and I would struggle. If I could, you probably wouldn’t be able to identify which one it is anyway. They all just sound the same. But I like Marcus Mumford’s voice. The accent and mannerisms used to grate on me, but I find his singing here more nuanced. On ‘Tompkin’s Square Park’ he displays an impressive range, hitting high and low notes convincingly, and nailing the subtle verse as much as the belting chorus.
Producer James Ford (Arctic Monkeys, Haim, SMD) has done surprisingly little to elicit any kind of groove out of the band. The added synth arpeggios and hints of electronic percussion don’t add anything except unnecessary noise. Mumford himself acted as the drummer, and he isn’t a particularly skilled one. The plodding rhythms add no dynamism, and you would struggle to say anything, either positive or negative, about the almost invisible basslines. The arrangements are bland and unadventurous and they are structured with no imagination. The songs start off quietly before exploding (I use that term loosely) in to controlled chaos. Sometimes they explode during the first chorus, usually after the second chorus and sometimes after the bridge. But with only a couple of exceptions this is how all the songs unfurl.
Ok. Nice. Not bad. Bareable. Fine. Maybe even Pretty decent. These are the adjectives that most easily spring to mind when thinking of ‘Wilder Mind’, and you have to think that Mumford and Sons core demographic probably wouldn’t disagree. They would quite possibly use them in a complimentary way. And back to my original point – I like ‘Wilder Mind’. You can’t listen to challenging or indulgent or heartbreaking or life changing music all the time, you’d wear yourself out. Sometimes ‘nice’ music is all you want to listen to. As part of a balanced diet, it may even be necessary. For those moments I give you Mumford and Sons.
4.5/10
Pop goes the Weasel 