Mumford and Sons dodge sophomore slump with ‘Babel’ [Review]

Often a band whose fame rides on the distinctiveness of their debut album’s style can lose that same magic on the second go-round, and thus be confined to the coffers of musical acts who came and went, leaving behind nothing more than a few good singles to add to the History of Music. Indie folk effort Mumford & Sons, whose 2010 success was fueled by rowdy banjo chords and a gruff, impassioned vocalist, have avoided that slippery slope with their sophomore album Babel, making the jump and becoming a Legitimate Band while also preserving their special, hearty essence. 

The best features of the band’s style — poetic lyrics that sound like Shakespeare with some good whiskey in him, huge leonine roars over banjo frenzies, affective ballads — are all in full attendance on Babel. The album hits the ground running with the energetic title track and thereafter cycles between ballads and blast-offs until the close. Where Sigh No More was far more memorable on the front end, Babel runs strong all the way through. Stampedes like the climax of “Below My Feet” (the album’s most chilling song) and the closing ballad, the reflective “Not With Haste”, are just as memorable as the laments on “Ghosts That We Knew” or the wild and jiggy “I Will Wait”, the first single on the album.

What makes the retention of freshness so impressive is that the music hasn’t really changed much; in this case, that’s a good thing. There’s nothing to suggest that “Holland Road” couldn’t have been on Sigh No More (except for a new maturity in Marcus Mumford’s songwriting). It seems that Mumford and Sons have, rather, gotten merged art and science and approached their music with a new precision. That’s not to say it sounds mechanical. It just seems as if Marcus and the gang have figured out what works and what doesn’t and used that newfound knowledge to stay steady even in the face of likely very unexpected fame (the album cover has the band as the only solid people in a market where everyone else is blurred with motion) and let their creativity flow.

Bottom line: Mumford and Sons have proven their legitimacy, their permanency, as a band with Babel, a record that feels, to use a very cliche phrase, very new and yet strangely familiar. It is something we should be thankful for that one of the most charismatic and stylistically memorable acts around today has been able to stay true to themselves without growing stagnant. Score: 8/10. 

Jake Bittle / A&E Editor