Mumford & Sons - Wilder Mind, album review: 'they've transformed themselves'

British chart-toppers rip it up and start again on American rock-influenced third album
New sound: Mumford turn to rock on Wilder Mind (Photo: Dominic Lipinski/PA)
Dominic Lipinski/PA
John Aizlewood5 May 2015

★★★★☆
(Gentlemen of the Road/Island)

In 2012, Babel, Mumford & Sons’s second album, topped the British and American charts. Any sensible band would attempt roughly the same thing again, but better. Not here. In a move amongst the very bravest by a globe-straddling pop phenomenon, they have abandoned almost everything that made them so popular, aside from Marcus Mumford’s catch-in-throat vocals and their songcraft. The banjos, the folk, the acoustic patches and the chimney sweep clothes are no more. Instead, the Londoners have transformed themselves into a fearsome all-out American rock band. If they are occasionally reminiscent of dull-period Kings of Leon, more often they eclipse the euphoric chiming guitars of Coldplay, the intricacy of The National and, when the drums thunder on The Wolf and Just Smoke, the grit of Bruce Springsteen. They might have sabotaged themselves, but they’ve got themselves out of a rut before anyone noticed they were in one.

Wilder Minds (Gentlemen of the Road / Island) is out on CD, LP and digital download now

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