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Mumford & Sons: Johannesburg

 A l b u m   D e t a i l s


Label: Island Records
Released: 2016.06.17
Time:
 20:31
Category: Folk Rock, Indie Folk
Producer(s): Mumford & Sons Johan Hugo
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] There Will Be Time [Baaba Maal] - 4:27
[2] Wona [Baaba Maal, The Very Best & Beatenberg] - 4:00
[3] Fool You've Landed [The Very Best & Beatenberg] - 3:41
[4] Ngamila [Baaba Maal & The Very Best] - 3:37
[5] Si Tu Veux [Baaba Maal & The Very Best] - 4:46

 A r t i s t s ,   P e r s o n n e l


Marcus Mumford - Lead Vocals, Guitar, Drums, Producer
Ted Dwane - Vocals, Electric Bass, Producer
Ben Lovett - Vocals, Piano, Keyboard, Synthesiser, Producer
Winston Marshall - Vocals, Guitar, Producer

Baaba Maal - Guest Artist
The Very Best - Guest Artist
Beatenberg - Guest Artist

Johan Hugo - Producer
Dan Grech-Marguerat - Additional Production, Programming, Mixing
Michael H. Brauer - Mixing on [1]
Bob Ludwig - Mastering
Chris Maas - Photography
David East - Photography
Ross Stirling - Artwork

 C o m m e n t s ,   N o t e s


Johannesburg is an extended play by British band Mumford & Sons, which was recorded during the band's tour in South Africa in early 2016. It is a collaboration with Senegalese singer Baaba Maal, South African pop group Beatenberg, and Malawian-British singer-producer combo The Very Best. The EP was released on 17 June 2016 through Island Records.



It'll come as no surprise that an EP called Johannesburg carries a considerable South African undercurrent to its rhythms and productions. It's a musical element heretofore unheard of in Mumford & Sons' music but it's not an uncomfortable fit, even if Johannesburg often brings to mind both Paul Simon's pioneering Graceland and, especially, the light lilt of Vampire Weekend. Unlike Simon, who built songs upon existing rhythms, Mumford & Sons collaborate with Baaba Maal, Beatenberg, and the Very Best, and this give and take brings the group closer to the globally minded urban pop of Vampire Weekend: despite all the African inflections, it sounds recognizably Mumford & Sons. Tellingly, it feels like a close cousin to the arena-filling moodiness of Wilder Mind but the songwriting is tighter and livelier and the band doesn't amble: Mumford & Sons proceed with intention, making this into a listen that's not only more compelling than their 2015 full-length, but one that suggests ways they could grow.

Rating: 3.5/5

Stephen Thomas Erlewine - All Music Guide



When massive pop artists shake things up, the results can be divisive. Pop music is designed to target the broadest swathe of the market, and changing the formula usually involves picking out and homing in on a more specific trait, something that in turn will appeal greatly to some and alienate others. For their new EP, Mumford & Sons embrace African music, folding it into their grandiose folk pop hooks. It’s tempting to call that move safe, considering the groundwork laid by everyone from Paul Simon to Vampire Weekend. But while they didn’t produce anything that will change their music or your perception of it, the resulting Johannesburg glows with a genuine appreciation, even love, of the music and musicians with which Mumford and Sons collaborated.

The EP comes only about a year out from Wilder Mind, the outfit’s third studio album. Divisive in its own way, the record found the British outfit amplifying the rock element of their sound, without sacrificing their massive pop appeal. The results were trite, sure, but again seemed to come from an honest passion, an interest that even if founded on cliches was rendered in loving accuracy. After that big change, it’s an interesting decision to incorporate an even bigger shift into their next release. But here they are, bringing in South African band Beatenberg, Malawian-British duo The Very Best, and Senegalese singer Baaba Maal. They got back into the studio again because they were inspired and sincere.

That sincerity counts as the EP’s biggest strength, but could also be considered its key weakness. The formula for the set remains pretty consistent: Tracks begin with a groove driven by their collaborators, followed by one of those iconic massive Mumford harmony hooks, return to the groove, rinse, and repeat. The one track on which all of the collaborators participate, “Wona” is a prime example. The guitars and bass bounce in a polyrhythm, followed by plenty of charming aux percussion and a skipping, Vampire Weekend-esque vocal line from Beatenberg’s Matthew Field. And then, just as the Mumford world seems to have changed, all of the momentum is capped by the arrival of a big, slow, syrupy melody — championed by vague lovelorn platitudes no less.

Rather than finding common ground, Mumford & Sons sound excited to stand side-by-side with their African collaborators. It’s hard to fault them; Maal, The Very Best, and Beatenberg’s were invited to this party because they’re all powerful artists in their own right. But rather than mine the potential depths of a more cohesive collaboration, the two halves often feel disconnected.

For that fusion of pop and African influences, one need look no further than Beatenberg. The trio of Field, Robin Brink, and Ross Dorkin bring vibrant, complex polyrhythms to bear on indie pop. The skipping “Fool You’ve Landed” is a bit listless — especially lyrically — but gets across a warm, sunny feeling. When Mumford and Sons give way completely to Maal on the closing “Si Tu Veux”, the result is similarly ecstatic, the harmonies acting as footlights for his evocative vocals, conveying so much emotion that even non-Pulaar speakers will get plenty from the song.

On the slow-burning “Ngamila”, the two halves come closest to being actually stitched together. The rhythms don’t disconnect between Maal’s verses and the Mumford chorus. The slinky lead guitar line and choppy percussion build to the appropriate epic heights for The Very Best vocalist Esau Mwamwaya, Maal, and Mumford’s full-throated syllables. “You stare at your own hands not the hands they entwine,” Mumford soars, followed by the Malawian Mwamwaya and the Senegalese Maal. In fact, though, it seems that Mumford & Sons spend equal time staring at their own hands and those they entwine, but less time at the fact that they’re entwined. Hopefully fans will notice, though, and move from here to Maal’s The Traveller, The Hanging Gardens of Beatenberg, and The Very Best’s Makes a King while they wait for Mumford and Sons’ next experiment.

Adam Kivel - June 23, 2016,
© 2007 - 2017 Consequence of Sound



Let’s say you, as a longtime fan of Baaba Maal, looked up the polyglot Senegalese singer on Apple Music today. Why, you might have wondered, were all of his current top songs from an EP called Johannesburg that’s primarily attributed to Mumford & Sons? Why is Maal, 62-year-old fixture of West African music, hanging out with Marcus Mumford & Co., purveyors of fine British beard oil since 2009?

First of all, we should say, Maal invited them. He recruited Mumford banjoist Winston Marshall to play on the title track of his most recent album, 2015’s The Traveller. And Johannesburg is not Mumford and Sons’ first brush with African music (though it may well be their second): Back in 2014, actor Idris Elba put together a collaborative album inspired by his role as Nelson Mandela in a 2013 biopic. The Mumfords contributed a re-recorded version of their song “Home” (which began as soundtrack for a remake of Wuthering Heights, of all things) with additional vocals from South African singer Thandiswa Mazwai. Anyway, here we are with five tracks of Mumfords + Maal + Swedish-Malawian duo the Very Best + Cape Town trio Beatenberg.

Mercifully, there’s no banjo — the Sons of Johannesburg are the less folksy, more decidedly middle-of-the-road band that recorded last year’s tedious Wilder Mind. That doesn’t save them from falling into 100 percent of all their other tropes, like substituting frenzied, overlong crescendos with truly grandiose stadium rock. The first such passage comes a whole two-and-a-half minutes into opener “There Will Be Time,” with plinking piano filling in for their usual starring banjo. “Wona” attempts to lighten the mood at this painfully earnest party, but the only thing it’s got in the tank is a years-late Vampire Weekend joke. Beatenberg’s Matthew Field musters a good Ezra Koenig impression, lifting the frontman’s lilting style and even his carefully enunciated Ivy League vocabulary (“You don’t want to viv-i-sect your heart”). “Fool You’ve Landed” does a more convincing job of meshing the thickly harmonized Mumford sound with Afropop, but it doesn’t include any Maal, which would seem to defeat some of the point.

Thematically, Johannesburg is so wholesomely multicultural it sounds as though it could go head-to-head with “Waka Waka (This Time for Africa),” Shakira’s 2010 South African World Cup theme song. (Did you know “Waka Waka” had an actual South African group, Freshlyground, backing up its marquee international pop star? Strange, me neither.) The Mumfords, for their part, claim to have been so moved by the experience of their first South African tour that they felt the need to make an EP about it, which sounds like sudden-onset traveler’s psychosis, or perhaps a case of, “Damn, look at all these tickets we sold.”

Johannesburg seems like a product of noble intentions, but it also seems like a mission trip — those church-sponsored rites of passage that dispatch eager young believers to spread the gospel to destinations deemed insufficiently Christian. Mr. Mumford, 29, has put a bit of distance between himself and his religious background (his parents founded the U.K. branch of the Vineyard Church, an American evangelical megachurch), but his references have never exactly been subtle. It’s not every British folk-rock band that’s regularly covered by Catholic, Mormon, and Protestant news outlets alike, and you don’t have to speak fluent evangelical to “code switch” Mumford lyrics. Lines like, “So open up my eyes to a new light / I wandered ’round your darkened land all night / But I lift up my eyes to a new high” (from “There Will Be Time”) are an attempt — albeit a ham-fisted one — at an intercultural hymn.

The just-visiting mentality is why Johannesburg is an EP, not a full album, and why the Mumfords, the whole-wheat bread of popular music, feel no need to stray from their typical foundation of glossy, Western-style rock. Elder statesmen like Paul Simon and David Byrne understand that a smaller but exponentially more invested audience is a perk of committing to a niche. Right now, Mumford and Sons are unlikely to commit to anything past the next supporting tour. They’re not Bono, perpetually and loudly campaigning for the less fortunate; they’re not Serge Gainsbourg, subverting a racist French establishment with a reggae Marseillaise. They’re self-justifying, meekly sanctimonious tourists. Even the title Johannesburg feels like a souvenir, and a colonialist one at that.

If you, the passionate Baaba Maal fan, can make it through four mostly stilted tracks, there is a reward at the end: the soulful and atmospheric “Si Tu Vieux,” the only song that sees Maal with a solo lead. Opening with a soaring vocalization, “Si Tu Vieux” is, in its own way, a humble invitation to worship. “If you want, you can come to my place,” Maal, the son of a muezzin, sings in French, the language of international diplomacy. “If you don’t want to, go to your place / And I will go to mine.” No one said he wasn’t a gracious host.

SPIN Rating: 5 of 10

Anna Gaca - June 24, 2016
SPIN Magazine
 

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