What seems like a lifetime ago, I used to have a blog titled Half-Empty: Confessions of a Pessimist (Who’s Trying To Do Better). I still love that title, but the blog itself was sort of a mess. It didn’t really have any theme, and I just sort of wrote about whatever I happened to be thinking about that day. It didn’t really start to take shape until I started writing about depression, but it would have been weird to keep the title and make the blog about something different, so I kind of retired it.
I say “kind of retired it,” though, because it is actually still up online, and it occasionally still gets a view or two. One of the most popular posts I ever wrote there was titled “The Sad and Wonderful Mumford & Sons.” The whole point of it was that while I enjoyed listening to Mumford & Sons, I felt like a lot of their songs sounded the same. Their success, I contended, was both a sad and wonderful thing; wonderful, because their sound definitely was different from what was being played on the radio at the time, and, sad, because there wasn’t much diversity to what they were doing on their first two albums.
Well, Marcus Mumford and Co., I owe you guys a straight-up apology.
With the release in May of Wilder Mind, Mumford & Sons blasted their way back into the public’s musical consciousness with an album filled not with banjos and acoustic guitars but electronic beats and amplifiers turned up to 11. This album doesn’t sound like their other two at all, prompting me to wonder if maybe they got tired of people like me complaining about their lack of creativity. I’ve only listened to the album a couple of times, so I can’t really give it a thumbs up or thumbs down yet, but there’s no denying it is a bold sonic statement by the band.
Even if this album tanks, I can’t express enough how much admiration I have for Mumford & Sons trying something like this. In essence, it is a huge risk. Their last album, Babel, won a Grammy award and inspired a slew of imitators, from secular (Looking at you, Lumineers.) to Christian (Stand up, Rend Collective.). With the success of the single “I Will Wait,” they proved they could get radio airplay without compromising their sound. They could have stayed the course, but they didn’t.
There are so many instances in life where we can stand back and wonder what might have been if we only did something a little out of character for us. What might that different decision have brought us? What if we had spoken up when we remained quiet? What if we had turned right instead of left? Depression can cause crippling effects when it comes to decision making and taking chances. Those of us who have it tend to want to cling to the island pretty tightly sometimes. We rarely crank our guitars to 11 and rock out.
So far, my favorite track from the new album is “The Wolf,” which features those loud guitars I was talking about. Turn it up, be happy, and celebrate the wonderful Mumford & Sons.
Lights In The Darkness 