Mumford & Sons recycle sound on new album

Mumford & Sons continues to make music that evokes an emotional response with a fruitful set…

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Mumford & Sons’ new album takes on a similar sound as its past album.

Mumford & Sons continues to make music that evokes an emotional response with a fruitful set of string instruments playing in unison. But the band doesn’t stray far from past music with its newest release, turning its greatest asset into its biggest impediment.

The band recently released its sophomore album, Babel, an exact musical replica of debut album Sigh No More, complete with an even mix of upbeat songs and ballads. Without an overwhelming amount of musical variation, the album lacks innovation but still meets past standards, meaning it will please listeners who don’t expect the band to diverge from its original sound or evolve into something different.

Babel doesn’t really do anything beneficial for Mumford & Sons. Instead it sits stagnant, still three years in the past. Listeners fell for the band’s original sound, and in an attempt to keep fans pleased, Mumford & Sons chose to recreate Sigh No More in its second form. Though the song titles and lyrics have changed, the sound is a regurgitated form of Mumford & Sons’ past music applied to new songs.

But that doesn’t mean the album has no worth. Mumford & Sons fills Babel with many tracks that emulate a similar sound to older music but maintain merit on their own. Songs such as “I Will Wait” and “Holland Road” sound exactly like tracks from Sigh No More, but both songs benefit the new album individually.

“I Will Wait,” the album’s first official single, mimics upbeat tracks like “The Cave” with inspiring lyrics and musical lulls that fall dramatically into powerful banjos. Other tracks, such as “Hopeless Wanderer,” take on the same melancholic angst that balladic tracks from Sigh No More resonated.

The band hit its peak a year after Sigh No More’s release, when every teenage girl used lyrics from “Little Lion Man” as her Facebook page status. Dedicated fans lingered while Mumford & Sons gradually released tracks that ended up on Babel, despite their antiquity. But instead of using the band’s fame to expand and diversify its sound, Mumford & Sons chose to remain comfortable in the flourishing sound of string instruments and whining voices over clanging music.

And Mumford & Sons’ style still works well. The folk-rock band established a distinct sound among a radio of pop divas, and its popularity leaked from the underground scene into more mainstream spheres. Listeners enjoyed the not-so-average music the band claimed as its own, and because of that, Mumford & Sons surely capitalizes on its success.

For fans who look to the new album as an extension of Mumford & Sons’ debut album, Babel will be the perfect continuance of something that should have been left in the past.