Wilder Mind
With the production help of James Ford (member of Simian Mobile Disco, and producer for Arctic Monkeys) and Aaron Dessner of the National, Mumford & Sons has successfully created perhaps the most adequate commercial rock album of 2015. It’s fine. But fine is nowhere near good, and when the music is this empty, it might actually be worse than bad.
Hate all you want on Mumford & Sons’ vest- and suspenders-adorned, banjo-worshipping, stomping, clapping, kick-drumming brand of poser-folk, but at least it was their thing. Not only was that thing a massive mainstream success, but it also put frontman Marcus Mumford on a gradual path to earning his genre bona fides,…
Sometimes, different is good. Other times, it's bad. In the case of Wilder Mind, Mumford & Sons' latest album, different is drastic. The band took a very public hiatus in late 2013, which finally concluded earlier this year.
Wilder Mind is a thoroughly competent recreation of what Mumford & Sons think an adult-oriented indie-rock album should sound like.
They’ve shed the banjos, the neckerchiefs and the campfire stomping – and come up with something even more flat, beige and ordinary
Marcus Mumford has never sounded better than on this overwhelmingly tense and bittersweet album, says Neil McCormick
Mumford and Sons, world conquering as they are, still fall victim to various accusations. Some, for instance, loathe their blandness. Others detect a whiff of smug middle class about them. Perhaps a more interesting observation, though, is how the band takes an intimate, personal musical form – folk – and turns it into something anthemic. Well, not any more. There’s nothing folk about Wilder Mind. Not a single banjo.