Mumford & Sons: Wilder Mind - review

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Wilder Mind

(Island)

Successful bands occasionally feel the need to shake things up, like U2 discovering humour on Achtung Baby or Radiohead going electronic on Kid A. Wilder Mind is in the same tradition, albeit at a dispiritingly unadventurous end of the scale.

Mumford & Sons' third album reboots the London faux-folkies as dull stadium rockers. The banjos and Woody Guthrie outfits are gone, replaced by chiming guitars, fierce solos, clattering drums and an awkward vocal turn from singer Marcus Mumford, uttering phrases such as "I'm climbing over something/And I'm running through these walls" with all the ponderousness they deserve.

The instrumentation has altered - but the band's songwriting formula remains unchanged. Songs start slowly, a vague shimmer of chords, the verbose Mumford describing some tumultuous but sketchily described relationship ("I didn't fool you, but I failed you/In short, made a fool out of you"). Then the tempo builds, drums kick in, Mumford's sternum starts heaving - and they're off.

These periods of flight provide the album's most appealing moments, accessorised in "Snake Eyes" by a briefly flowering synthesiser melody, a rare innovation. But the momentum invariably leads us back to where we began, with the band going through the same motions in the following song. Never has the sensation of running to keep standing still been captured more effectively.

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