Let me learn from where I have been, keep my eyes to serve, my hands to learn.” For Mumford, being grounded and remaining humble is a vital way of interacting with the world, an idea which the album closer brings full circle. So all must be well.” The song’s rousing chorus suggests a way to live within this fallen world, where stillness and peace are sometimes hard to find: “Keep the earth below my feet, for all my sweat, my blood runs weak. This sense of rest and peace is most obviously evident on the album’s final two songs “Below My Feet” and “Not With Haste.” Beginning slowly before transforming into romping celebration, “Below My Feet” is buoyed by airy background vocals, giving a breathless ease to lead singer Marcus Mumford’s declaration of faith amid the struggles of life: “And I was still, but I was under your spell, when Jesus told me all was well. While the music on Babel doesn’t stray too far away from what we heard on Sigh No More, I have found little evidence of false sentimentality as I have listened to Babel over the past few weeks instead, my reaction has been the opposite and I have found a measure of peace and grace in Babel, just as I did in Sigh No More. Certainly, Mumford and Sons’ music is charged with emotion, often relying on contrasts between soft and loud and slow and fast to produce their particular brand of folk-inflected pop music, but questioning the emotional sincerity of their music based upon their ability to create emotionally resonant songs seems like a bizarre criticism. With a title like Babel and its connotations of confusion, especially between different languages, I find it intriguing that so many reviews of and reactions to this album accuse it of pandering to the masses by creating a common musical language that is derived from calling up false emotions.
Similarly to their previous album, Sigh No More, this album takes a biblical idea/symbol as its title however, Babel conjures up a different set of ideas regarding religion than the reference to heaven provided by the title of the band’s first album. Both of these articles are interesting reads, and they address what I see as the central theme of Mumford and Sons’ music: their incredible ability to introduce Christian and religious symbols to a large audience, imparting grace and hope to their listeners. Two recent articles on the band illustrate the variety of opinions that have been voiced about Babel and the obvious religious symbolism in the group’s music: the first, “Mumford & Sons Preaches to Masses”, from NPR’s Ann Powers (which DZ mentioned on Friday), speaks to the band’s power to bring religious ideas to the public and the second, “Mumford & Sons and the Death of Church Music”, comes from The American Conservative’s Jordan Bloom, in a direct reply to Powers’ article, where he connects the vapid sentimentality he sees in contemporary worship music to Mumford and their music. Depending on who you ask, the band’s music is heartfelt and refreshing, beautifully expressing the human desire for love and grace or maudlin and mediocre, only created to prey on the sentimentality of the general population.
The tracklisting as featured on the band’s website is as follows:ġ2.Everyone’s favorite British folk band, Mumford and Sons, and their latest album, Babel, have been a hot news item since the album was released a couple of weeks ago. “Lover of the Light”, “Lovers Eyes” and “Ghosts That We Knew”, after the band introduced a few of them into their set list over the band’s past tours. Some Fans will already be familiar with some of their new songs, such as: And so we feel that this record is a natural progression that we’re proud of, and we cannot wait to take it out on the road.” As a band, we’ve never been closer or more collaborative, all working to our strengths. “The album started to come together, and with the help of Markus Dravs once more (and engineer Robin Baynton), we started to relish the challenge of making this album. But then we fell in love with recording again.” We love playing live, obviously, but it had also become an important part of our creative process, we had been writing and rehearsing in sound checks, and sort of ‘road-testing’ new songs on our very gracious audiences. At first, we peeled ourselves off the road quite reluctantly. We had started writing new songs well before we got into the studio to record.
“We are more than excited to release Babel into the world. In a recent statement the band spoke about the new album. Following the huge success of their debut record Sigh No More, the band plan to release their new music to the world on September 24th. British-folk band Mumford & Sons have just announced details on their new album Babel.
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