Second albums are tricky affairs and, despite three years of preparation, Mumford and Sons' Babel is no exception.
One issue is that what surprised on the first album is now familiar territory when it comes to the second. Hence, in part, the plethora of comments in reviews that Babel is Sigh No More part II. That is only partly the case. Negatively, there is no equivalent surprise on Babel to the shock of Sigh No More's opening lines, 'Serve God, love me and mend ...' which set up the then unfashionable combination of driven folk strumming with spiritual insight which characterised that album. Babel retains the use of religious language but has less to offer in the way of those insightful aphorisms, couplets and verses which leapt out of so many of the songs on Sigh No More. This, combined with its relentlessly first person narratives, means that Babel, although consistently using the imagery of darkness and light, has less contrast, less light and shade, than Sigh No More.
Babel is generally a darker album with its repeated themes of leaving, loss and wandering set primarily in first person strained romances. That is not the full picture however as several of the songs seem both more powerful and more logical as addresses to God rather than a human lover. I'm thinking here particularly of 'Hopeless Wanderer' - a prayer for constancy having found the right road - and 'Below My Feet' - a prayer for ongoing learning and service having received the message from Jesus that all is well.
The darkness, loss and wandering that suffuse Babel is then fused with the transcendent sound and anthemic choruses that Mumford and Sons conjure up with banjo, double bass, guitar, keyboards and vocals. In this way the songs, despite their content, provide Mumford Moments - what the Urban Dictionary describes as moments when you become really engrossed with and entranced by the transcendent music of Mumford and Sons bringing on a feeling of euphoria or spirituality. The essence of Mumford and Sons' sound and success is this sense of transcendence which they create The restlessness of which they write is the precursor to the search for participation in something greater than they know. That is transcendence and their euphoric music achieves this even when the words they sing focus more on restlessness than rising. The religious language they use and the spiritual insights they bring serve to ground this transcendent sound in the search for something more so that their songs are not simply motivational or exhortatory but instead sound and sense are one and the same.
Written Pre-Mumfords, these words from Bill Friskics-Warren in his book I'll Take You There: Pop Music and the Urge for Transcendence are nevertheless relevant:
'Records that articulate an urge for transcendence, and a great number of them do, are not pegged as easily as the bins of retailers might suggest. Less the domains of genres like rock, soul, and rap, they might more appropriately be termed "transcendental music" - music that, regardless of stylistic signature or marketing niche, points beyond itself, urging listeners to look past the mundane and to see themselves and their striving in a new light. Those who make transcendental music understand how this works only too well. They typically have had their worlds opened up in much the same way. Johnny Cash, who struggled, as he sang, to "subdue the beast within," was drawn to the existential conflict in the songs of Bob Dylan and Kris Kristofferson, just as Dylan and Kristofferson were enthralled by the work of the Beat Poets and the French symbolists before them. Al Green, a soul singer who eventually became a preacher, identified with the spiritual desolation of Hank Williams's "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry." Polly Harvey, a post-punk, art-school dropout from rural England, sought cathartic renewal in the blues, much as her Irish counterpart Van Morrison first did some thirty years before her.
Records of a transcendental bent, those made by people trying to get higher - and often, to take us there as well - are not peripheral to the history of popular music; they lie at the heart of it. The restlessness that they express often speaks to people as profoundly as what they hear in church or at their mosque or synagogue - more profoundly at times, especially lately, as many wrestle with questions of providence in our seemingly more volatile world. Countless people in the United States, for example, looked to Bruce Springsteen and his album The Rising for comfort and insight after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in 2001. In today's post-Christian milieu - a world defined increasingly by multiculturalism and globalization - pop music frequently serves as a substitute for conventional religious observance, or at least provides spiritual clarity and guidance where it might be lacking. Pop music has for decades possessed the power, much as liturgies and sacred music have for centuries, to transport the human spirit and serve as a vehicle for the transcendence we seek.'
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Mumford and Sons - Below My Feet.
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