..:: audio-music dot info ::..


Main Page      The Desert Island      Copyright Notice
 Aa Bb Cc Dd Ee Ff Gg Hh Ii Jj Kk Ll Mm Nn Oo Pp Qq Rr Ss Tt Uu Vv Ww Xx Yy Zz


Mumford & Sons: Babel

 A l b u m   D e t a i l s


Label: Island Records
Released: 2012.09.21
Time:
 63:33
Category: Folk Rock, Indie Folk
Producer(s): Markus Dravs
Rating:
Media type: CD
Web address: www.mumfordandsons.com
Appears with:
Purchase date: 2017
Price in €: 1,00





 S o n g s ,   T r a c k s


[1] Babel (T.Dwane/B.Lovett/M.Mumford/W.Marshall) - 3:29
[2] Whispers in the Dark (T.Dwane/B.Lovett/M.Mumford/W.Marshall) - 3:15
[3] I Will Wait (T.Dwane/B.Lovett/M.Mumford/W.Marshall) - 4:36
[4] Holland Road (T.Dwane/B.Lovett/M.Mumford/W.Marshall) - 4:13
[5] Ghosts That We Knew (T.Dwane/B.Lovett/M.Mumford/W.Marshall) - 5:39
[6] Lover of the Light (T.Dwane/B.Lovett/M.Mumford/W.Marshall) - 5:14
[7] Lovers' Eyes (T.Dwane/B.Lovett/M.Mumford/W.Marshall) - 5:21
[8] Reminder (T.Dwane/B.Lovett/M.Mumford/W.Marshall) - 2:04
[9] Hopeless Wanderer (T.Dwane/B.Lovett/M.Mumford/W.Marshall) - 5:07
[10] Broken Crown (T.Dwane/B.Lovett/M.Mumford/W.Marshall) - 4:16
[11] Below My Feet (T.Dwane/B.Lovett/M.Mumford/W.Marshall) - 4:52
[12] Not With Haste (T.Dwane/B.Lovett/M.Mumford/W.Marshall) - 4:07
[13] For Those Below (T.Dwane/B.Lovett/M.Mumford/W.Marshall) - 3:36
[14] The Boxer (P.Simon) - 4:06
[15] Where Are You Now? (T.Dwane/B.Lovett/M.Mumford/W.Marshall) - 3:41

 A r t i s t s ,   P e r s o n n e l


Marcus Mumford - Acoustic & Electric Guitar, Drum Kit, Percussion, & Lead Vocals
Ted Dwane - Acoustic Bass, Electric Bass, Electric Guitar, Drum Kit, Percussion & Vocals
Ben Lovett - Piano, Keyboard, Mellotron, Accordion, Electric Guitar, & Vocals
Winston Marshall - Banjo, Electric Banjo, Electric Bass, Electric Guitar, Resonator Guitar & Vocals, Lead Vocals on [7,13]

Chris Alan - Cello
Nell Catchpole - Violin, Viola
Nick Etwell - Trumpet, Flugelhorn
Ross Holmes - Fiddle
Dave Williamson - Trombone
Richard Martin - Percussion
Jerry Douglas - Dobro & Vocals on [14]
Paul Simon - Vocals & Electric Guitar on [14]

Markus Dravs - Producer

 C o m m e n t s ,   N o t e s


English folk revivalists Mumford & Sons' 2009 debut, Sigh No More, boarded the slowest train it could find on its journey from regional gem to pleasantly surprising, international success story. After simmering and stewing throughout the U.K. and Europe, the band landed boots first at the Staples Center for a rousing performance at the 2011 Grammy Awards that found the smartly dressed quartet tearing through "The Cave," and then backing, along with the equally snappy Avett Brothers, Bob Dylan on a generation-spanning rendition of "Maggie's Farm" that provided one of the better Grammy moments of the last decade or so. They may lack the lyrical prowess of "The Bard," but they know how to turn a phrase, plant a seed, and build a bridge and tear it back down again without losing the audience in the process. Simply put, they can bend the relative simplicity of traditional folk music to their collective wills, which is exactly what they do on their sophomore outing, Babel. It's also exactly what they did on their debut, and short of being a little rowdier and raspier, Babel feels less like a legitimate sequel and more like an expanded edition of the former. Working once again with producer Markus Dravs, who helmed Arcade Fire's Grammy-winning opus The Suburbs, the Mumford boys have crafted another set of incredibly spirited songs that bark much louder than they bite. Ballsy, pained, fiery, and fraught with near constant references to sin, salvation, and all of the pontifical hopes and doubts that lie between, most of Babel is caught between the confessional and an apocalyptic hootenanny, delivering its everyman message with the kind of calculated spiritual fervor that comes from having to adapt to the festival masses as opposed to the smaller club crowds. Tracks like "Hopeless Wanderer," "Broken Crown," and the vivacious title cut bristle with moxie and self-importance, but feel like a ruse, aiming for the parking lot with the kind of generic, turgid melodrama that always overshoots its mark, leaving another smoky hole in an already pockmarked landscape. It's a shame because there's some potential here, especially when the group eases back on the Me Street Band histrionics. Two albums in and Mumford & Sons still sound like a band fused to the starting block, paralyzed by the thought of having to truly race for their lives.

Rating:3/5

James Christopher Monger - All Music Guide



It's hard to imagine a more preposterous road to platinum success than the one Mumford & Sons traveled. Sigh No More, the 2010 debut by Marcus Mumford and his London crew, is a set of rousing tunes clad in choirboy harmonies, clawhammer banjo and Salvation Army brass that exploded amid a sea of AutoTuned cyber-pop. Soon, the band was backing Dylan on the Grammys, recording Kinks classics with Ray Davies and uncannily recalling the days when string bands like the Carter Family and the Louvin Brothers were radio gold.

Babel steps up Mumford & Sons' game without changing it too much. It feels shinier, punchier, more arena-scale than the debut, with the band hollering, hooting, plucking and strumming like Olympian street buskers. The songs lean toward the hooky folkfest stomps of tunes such as "Little Lion Man" and "The Cave," whose beer-slosh melody and fist-pump dynamics branded Sigh No More. See Babel's hymnlike first single, "I Will Wait," and "Lover of the Light" – both are proof that the Mumfords do dramatic builds, dropouts and soft-loud shifts as impressively as U2 or Skrillex. The fact that these guys are able to do big rock catharsis with humble tools is part of the thrill.

But it's the band's lyrics, and Mumford's delivery, that define the album's sound. Babel is full of all manner of religious shoptalk, with Biblical metaphors swirling like detritus in a Christopher Nolan film. Jesus is invoked above Edge-style guitar on "Below My Feet." On "Whispers in the Dark," Mumford declares an intention "to serve the Lord" over a Riverdance bounce. Compared to unfreaky-folk-revival peers like the Avett Brothers or the Low Anthem, Mumford & Sons really double down on the ol' time religion.

Mumford grew up around evangelicals - his parents are English figureheads of The Vineyard, a California-born Christian movement that's so pop-savvy, they run a couple of record labels. (Bob Dylan was a member of the fellowship during his Christian phase in the Seventies.) But proselytizing is not the mission on Babel. Where Rick Ross slings church flavor to add levity to street tales, Mumford uses it to supersize and complicate love songs. "Lovers' Eyes" is merely the best of several songs that wrestle with betrayer's guilt. On "Broken Crown" he seems both sinner and sinned against. "The pull on my flesh was just too strong," he cries with moving hair-shirt candor. Disgraced politicians could learn something from this dude.

Colored with brass, group vocals and Ben Lovett's understated piano, "Lovers' Eyes" and "Broken Crown" (which, like "Little Lion Man," makes showstopping use of the word "fucked") show the subtler and more British folk elements that marked the group's debut. Those flavors get toned down on this record, which is too bad. But the power of the arrangements and Marcus Mumford's tortured-vicar vocals is undeniable. And if his conflation of love, lust and Christian spirituality sounds more like pre-dawn confusion than neat Bible lessons, it feels all the truer for it. His parents should be proud.

Rating: 3.5/5

Will Hermes - September 20, 2012
© Rolling Stone 2017



You’re more likely to hear banjos and dobros on country radio than on alternative stations, but Mumford & Sons, along with likeminded acts such as the Avett Brothers, Band of Horses, and the Felice Brothers, have used their string instruments to lead a folk-music revival in modern rock. With their sophomore album, Babel, Mumford & Sons look to keep that roots-rock revivalism going by sticking to the same formula as their double-platinum, Grammy-endorsed debut, Sigh No More. While the quartet may be perfectly competent musicians, though, their fundamental conservatism plays against them on Babel, making for an album that’s entirely too familiar and safe.

Producer Markus Dravs adds little to the band’s template that wasn’t already established on their debut. But for the looped reverb that opens “Whispers in the Dark” and the full string section on “Lover of the Light,” Babel rarely strays from the forcefully performed acoustic rock Mumford & Sons offered on singles such as “Roll Away the Stone” and “The Cave.” Such filler as “Ghosts That We Know,” “Lovers’ Eyes,” and “Broken Crown” could be swapped entirely with cuts from Sigh No More without any loss of thematic or stylistic coherence to either album.

There’s a leaden quality to the songs here. Compared to a band like Old Crow Medicine Show or Punch Brothers, who use similar sets of instruments, Mumford & Sons’ performances are heavy and aggressive rather than nimble or light-handed. Even on uptempo cuts like lead single “I Will Wait” or “Broken Crown,” the band sounds like they’re fighting against the sluggishness of their own arrangements. The midtempo material that comprises the bulk of the album is weighed down by the ballast of its overwrought and often dreary aesthetic.

Unfortunately, the music is perhaps too well-matched to the band’s lyrics, which skew toward the portentous and pontificating. The title track finds frontman Marcus Mumford sounding like he’s trying to pass a kidney stone as he wails, “So come down from your mountain and stand where we’ve been/You know our breath is weak and our bodies thin,” creating a great deal of bluster without any specific antecedent. Vaguely religious imagery recurs throughout the album on tracks like “Ghosts That We Know” and “Holland Road,” but it’s employed so generally that it only approximates significance or importance without having any actual weight behind it.

The songs that stick to straightforward folk conventions and employ believable, first-person details, like “Hopeless Wanderer” and “I Will Wait,” fare better and speak to Mumford & Sons’ potential to recast traditional folk in a modern context. But much like Sigh No More before it, Babel is just too serious. Too sludgy in their form and trading too much in melodrama and grand but empty gestures, Mumford & Sons aren’t the second coming of Bob Dylan or Billy Bragg; they’re Creed with a banjo.

Rating: 2.5/5

Jonathan Keefe - September 24, 2012
SLANT Magazine



Mumford & Sons has been tight-lipped while working on this record, stressing an “evolution, not a revolution” to NME earlier this year after some reports suggested they were making a fusion of folk and heavy metal. What they’ve delivered in Babel is part two of Sigh, with more irresistible pop hooks, lofty lyrics, and the dynamic interplay between loud and soft that pushed the group into the international spotlight.

The pressure on Marcus Mumford to produce top-notch material for Babel must have been daunting. He has responded by going with what he knows: the same rhythm guitar pattern over and over and a songwriting formula that is almost computer-programmable. As on Sigh, the challenge for producer Markus Dravs lies in capturing a primarily live band’s sound in the studio. He’s succeeded; there’s hardly a second on Babel that doesn’t feel sonically impeccable.

If the band and Dravs are masters at crosschecking every aspect of the recording process, Mumford’s lyrics don’t seem to bear the same scrutiny. On Babel, he’s often playing the part of the spurned lover who exacts revenge through hopeful poetics. As a lyricist, Mumford has a proclivity for ruining his best stuff with his worst. The simple, winsome chorus of “Lover Of The Light” follows a pair of grammatically challenged and obtuse lines in the verse: “There’ll be no value when the strength of walls that I have grown / They’ll be no comfort in the shade of the shadows thrown.” There are images of walls and towers in nearly every song, but they don’t serve as a unifying theme—a missed opportunity for an album named after a famous tower. Instead, the images seem like go-to words in a lazy songwriter’s starved lexicon. It’s not hard to get the feeling that Marcus Mumford has spent his whole life reading the language of the Bible without stopping to think for a second about what any of it means.

Rating: 3/5

Hayden Childs and Davis Inman - Sep 25, 2012
A.V.Club © Copyright 2017 Onion Inc



Millions watched Mumford & Sons join Bob Dylan at the 2011 Grammys to play ”Maggie’s Farm,” which is somewhat ironic. Wasn’t that song supposed to be Dylan’s screed against the folk scene? Now the Sons are leading a folk revival that includes the Lumineers, Milo Greene, and Of Monsters and Men — a whole new generation of bands who dress like There Will Be Blood extras and treat folk-rock with such devotion you’d think it was an old-time religion.

And for Marcus Mumford, maybe it is. His parents are leaders in the Vineyard Church, an evangelical movement that has its own record label and traces its musical history back to the Righteous Brothers. While that doesn’t necessarily mean he’s a practicing Christian, he’s definitely interested in the saved-by-rock-&-roll stuff. On Babel, he wails about serving the Lord and saving his sins for the ark while his band harmonizes along with all the lift-ev’ry-voice fervor of a Pentecostal sermon. ”I leave no time/For a cynic’s mind,” he sings on the ballad ”Not With Haste.” He isn’t kidding.

If you don’t own enough cable-knit sweaters to appreciate lyrics this earnest, the music may change your cynic’s mind. Producer Markus Dravs (Arcade Fire) works hard to capture the feverish uplift of the Sons’ live shows, giving each piano note and mandolin string the echoing-to-the-log-cabin-rafters treatment. And the band has mastered the emotional gut-punch of quiet/loud dynamics, exploding from low-murmured harmonies into full Appalachian freak-outs. All the while, Marcus howls about grace and love over a frenzy of strumming. The guy’s clearly a true believer — even if he believes in nothing more than banjo solos.

Rating: -A

Melissa Maerz - October 1, 2012
Entertainment Copyright © 2017 Time Inc



There's a phrase, midway through Mumford & Sons' second album, that neatly encapsulates their existence. "Watch the world tear us apart," Marcus Mumford sing-speaks in his tarry voice, "a stoic mind and a bleeding heart." They are the epitome of a Marmite band: vilified for their privileged background and narrow vision of folk music; celebrated for their spit'n'sawdust energy and biblical framing of love. Babel will only entrench these positions: essentially it's a honing of their 2009 debut, Sigh No More, but with more of the ferocity you encounter in their live show. Cue lots of vigorous stomping, portentous orchestration in Broken Crown, and an unwelcome blast of folk-metal in Below My Feet; and a concomitant dearth of nuance. Gently rippling melodies are all too quickly trampled by strident guitars and Winston Marshall's clanging banjo, while the crackle in Mumford's voice, especially in the subdued bits of Ghosts That We Knew and Lover of the Light, would be more affecting if he sounded less declamatory.

Rating: 3/5

Maddy Costa - 20 September 2012
© 2017 Guardian News and Media Limited



Two-and-a-half million copies of debut ‘Sigh No More’ shifted in the States alone. A bigger festival draw than a reformed Smiths with Rolf Harris on didgeridoo. Their very own continent-hopping Gentlemen Of The Road grand tour. Doing more for barn dances than any band since Rednex. Mumford & Sons are kind of a big deal these days and ‘Babel’, their long-awaited second album, means serious business. Their folk-tinged, banjo-plucking austerity indie has made them rich and successful beyond their wildest dreams. If they ain’t broke, why fix it?

There are no surprises on ‘Babel’. It’s a retooled, streamlined adaptation of ‘Sigh No More’, market-tested and ready to go. As you might expect from a band riding their kind of wave, there’s no experimentation. It’s as challenging as a one-piece jigsaw – but then you don’t throw on gingham shirts and sackcloth to break new ground. What Mumford & Sons do, with ruthless efficiency, is write surging singalong anthems for fairweather festival-goers. As any number of jealous songwriters will attest, that isn’t anywhere near as easy as they make it look.

Take the opening title track. It’s purpose-built for the biggest stages in the world, stuffed with muddled Biblical allusions and skittering banjo lines. A couple of tracks later, on ‘I Will Wait’, they’re doing it again with a refrain that already seems pregnant with the echoes of all the voices who’ll holler it back to them. If you think that’s big, wait until you hear ‘Lover Of The Light’. Horns! Huge choruses! Hysteria! It’s no surprise it’s already a live favourite. On the epic ‘Hopeless Wanderer’ there’s the sort of vigorous piano banging that suggests someone’s just kicked a stool out from under them. And every time you think they’re all out of bombast, the Mumfords reload and your toes start tapping.

There are slower moments too. ‘Ghosts That We Knew’ is all strings and melancholy, while ‘Lover’s Eyes’ is Mumford & Sons at their most fragile, a brief respite from the bounding banjos. ‘Broken Crown’ is a shade darker than the rest, with Marcus Mumford howling and swearing in frustration. So there’s variety, even if there’s not a lot of nuance. Emotionally it runs the gamut from A to B. There’s lots of waiting and longing but never really any desperate soul-clawing despair – just the gentle heartache that can be solved with the kind of montage the songs will inevitably soundtrack on some maudlin teen drama.

If you can get past the earnest nostalgia and tweedy affectations, this isn’t a bad album, just an average one. They’re gentlemen of the middle of the road. The Mumford & Sons machine still ain’t broke. But you might find yourself longing for someone to throw a spanner in the works.

Kevin EG Perry -  Sep 21, 2012
NME ©1996-2016 Time Inc. (UK) Ltd.




Babel is the second studio album by British rock band Mumford & Sons. As with Sigh No More, the album was produced by Markus Dravs. The vinyl LP version of the record was pressed by United Record Pressing in Nashville, Tennessee. It was released on 21 September 2012 in Ireland, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Norway, Australia and New Zealand. It was released on 24 September 2012 in the United Kingdom, Scandinavia, Spain, Italy, Eastern Europe, South America, and on 25 September 2012 in the United States and Canada. Upon its release, Babel debuted at number one on both the UK Albums Chart and the US Billboard 200. It became the fastest-selling album of 2012 in the UK, selling over 159,000 copies in its first week, and was the biggest selling debut of any album in 2012 in the US at the time, selling 600,000 in its first week. The album received generally positive reviews from music critics and was nominated in the category of Album of the Year for both a Brit Award and Grammy Award, winning the latter.

In late 2010, Mumford & Sons had already begun road-testing new material that they had been working on. Most of these songs, including "Broken Crown" and "Below My Feet", had already been played live on numerous occasions before the album's release. Mumford & Sons decided not to change their sound on Babel, which is the follow-up to 2009's highly successful Sigh No More, which elevated them to international fame. They did, however, admit that they purposely took their time in order to perfect the sound that they had already developed. After a year of speculation, it was finally announced via their official website on Monday, 16 July 2012 that their new album Babel would be released in the UK on 24 September, and the following day in the US. A final track list and album art were also revealed, as well as a 30-second promo. Babel was made available for preorder on the band's official website on Monday, 23 July, when it was announced that the album would also be released as a vinyl LP and a deluxe edition with additional tracks.

Babel received generally positive reviews from music critics. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album received an average score of 63, based on 33 reviews. Mojo magazine found it to be "more than just a decent nu-folk album," but also "a great pop album", while the Daily Mail said that Mumford & Sons add "a fresh sheen to rustic folkrock" on Babel. Clash called it a "rip-roaring record" with catchy hooks and "not much depth," but "some good tunes". Davis Inman of The A.V. Club found the entire album "sonically impeccable", even though Mumford's imagery seems "like go-to words in a lazy songwriter's starved lexicon." Q called it an "ultimately comfortable listening, befitting folk sounds of a resolutely un-freak variety." Melissa Maerz of Entertainment Weekly viewed that the music will convince listeners who cannot appreciate "lyrics this earnest", as the band "has mastered the emotional gut-punch of quiet/loud dynamics". Kelly O'Brien of State praised the band's "unrestrained ardour and zealous poetry", and wrote that they "manage to play loudly and boisterously, without ever making the descent into cacophony." Will Hermes of Rolling Stone cited the band's lyrics as the album's defining characteristic, writing that they use "church flavor" to "supersize and complicate love songs." Magnet magazine found Babel to be a "more subtle and accomplished album" than Sigh No More. In a mixed review, Kevin Perry of NME called it an "average", "middle of the road" album and "a retooled, streamlined adaptation" of Sigh No More. Greg Kot of the Chicago Tribune found its songwriting "pedestrian" and felt that the "loud-quiet-loud dynamic" of both the singing and the music "becomes repetitive." Allmusic's James Christopher Monger felt that its "incredibly spirited" songs "bark much louder than they bite" and found most of the album "delivering its everyman message with the kind of calculated spiritual fervor that comes from having to adapt to the festival masses as opposed to the smaller club crowds." Chuck Eddy of Spin panned the band's "U2-style evangelism" and wrote that they "don't seem remotely musically curious." Andy Gill of The Independent headlined his review "A Heart-to-Heart with the Nu-Folk Romantics" and accused Mumford of "wallowing self-absorption" while lacking "metaphor and metonymy". Kitty Empire of The Observer called Babel "an anodyne record, lacking the shivery authority of Laura Marling's work", and viewed the band's "lack of nuance" as counterintuitive, writing that "folk is a malleable resource, and here it is stripped of all politics or witness-bearing, becoming an exercise in romantic exegesis for nice men with mandolins." Uncut magazine wrote similarly that the love themes "[reduce] the genre to the level of rusticised boy-band pop."

Babel debuted at number one in the UK selling 159,000 copies and becoming the fastest selling album of 2012. It also sold 573,000 copies in the UK in 2012. The album debuted at number one on the US Billboard 200, selling 600,000 copies, the second biggest debut of the year behind Taylor Swift's album, Red. The album spent a total of 15 weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard Alternative Albums chart, longer than any other album has since Dark Horse by Nickelback. It sold 1,463,000 copies in the US in 2012, which made it the fourth best-selling album in the US in 2012. It was also the eleventh best-selling album of 2013 with 1,096,000 copies sold for the year. As of May 2015, the album has sold 2.7 million copies in the US. The album also debuted at number one on the Canadian Albums Chart selling 75,000 copies.

wikipedia.org
 

 L y r i c s


Currently no Lyrics available!

 M P 3   S a m p l e s


Currently no Samples available!