Mumford & Sons: Wilder Mind ALBUM REVIEW

For the past few years, Mumford & Sons have been a punching bag for snobby, hipster publications and blogs. They were playing a style of music that a lot of bands played, but they had a bigger budget and sounded better than most bands in the neo-folk genre. Sure they were a bit bland, but I'd say their last album Babel was an improvement over their debut. In short, I don't hate Mumford & Sons, I think they do neo-folk more justice than other people in their sector, especially someone like Edward Sharp or Passenger.

Wilder Mind is a big change of pace for the band, they have turned from their folk roots and have instead opted to plug in their guitars and go for a rock sound... one that is just as bland and boring as the hipster blogs said their last two albums were. I'm not going to spend a lot of time writing about this album because it doesn't warrant it. All you really need to know about Wilder Mind is that if you liked the band's past sound or even just want a solid rock album; this is not the album you're looking for.

This album just sounds so played out and repetitive, I could hardly tell these tracks apart on my first couple of listens. Not one of these tracks, save for maybe "The Wolf" warranted a response from me, and that track only got one because it has a decent melody and actually possesses a modicum of energy. But that is where the positives stop for me, this album simply left me wanting so much more.

Also, I just want to point out something that makes this album even more irritating: the production. I mean, these guys have always sounded clean cut, but this album takes the genre of rock and runs it through a washing machine full of every conceivable cleaning product on the planet, then douses it all in a really bland reverb effect until everything feels cavernous and "big", when in truth, it just sounds distant and empty.

I've listened to a lot of really solid rock albums this year, even from bands that I wasn't expecting much from, but Mumford & Sons have put out an album that takes all the energy of rock music and shoots it out somewhere in the stratosphere, never to be seen again. Ed Sheeran is doing more energetic rock music than Mumford & Sons.

3.0/10