Mumford & Sons - Babel

Mumford & Sons - Babel
Island/Glassnote, 2012

3.5 stars

After this year’s American Idol coronation song (“Home,” by the unfortunately named Phillip Phillips) pretty much rewrote Mumford & Sons’ previous hits in a more uplifting fashion, it was clear they were becoming a substantial force in the music world. And why not? Their debut, 2009’s Sigh No More spawned a bunch of hits and sold five million copies. It was also pretty easy to like, a superfluous but well-executed collection of folk-pop tunes that made listeners feel rugged and indie without asking them to venture too far beyond the boundaries of conventional radio rock or singer/songwriter fare. The songs had a pleasant, winterish feel to them that fell somewhere between The Fray and Fleet Foxes, and the bombastic tendencies of the production (provided by Markus Dravs, a guy with a proven reputation of making “big” records like Arcade Fire’s The Suburbs or Coldplay’s Mylo Xyloto) gave the songs an arena-bound energy.

So why, then, did so many people absolutely abhor this band? To be fair, they got a lot of hyperbolic love too, transforming somewhere along the line into the next “frat boy” sensation (for the same people who worship Dave Matthews, Jason Mraz, and O.A.R.). I personally could never figure out how the music at hand managed to inspire such passionate feelings in either direction. As far as I was concerned, you could do a lot worse than Mumford & Sons, but you could also do a lot better. They were innocuous, a lesser version of the folk bands they imitated, but they weren’t the villainous, “folk-rock-answer-to-Nickelback” figures that some of their fiercest detractors accused them of being.

All of this holds true for Babel, their highly anticipated sophomore album, which is, for better or worse, pretty much the exact same record as Sigh No More. The words and literary references have been changed around, but on the whole, Babel follows the same form as its predecessor, and numerous songs are almost blatantly written in the same tradition as past ones. The most obvious example is “Broken Crown,” essentially a sped up version of Sigh’s “I Gave You All,” but listeners will hear familiar echoes regularly throughout these 12 tracks. Most of the time though, it follows the mantra of any blockbuster Hollywood sequel: do everything you did the first time, just do it bigger. That motto is immediately prevalent in the album’s introduction, which positions three rousing numbers in a row. “Babel” opens the album in a similar vein to the title track from Sigh No More, only rather than building the song from Appalachian vocal harmonies, the band just races out of the gate. We get the furiously strummed acoustic guitar, the banjo licks, and the strong percussion backdrop to fill things out before Marcus Mumford lends his signature vocals to the mix. He strains on the high notes and whispers at the quieter sections, in the same way we’ve heard him do before. We’ll hear it again, too.

Make no mistake, Babel is the not an evolution. We don’t get any of the experimentation or bloated self-importance that so often characterizes post-breakthrough albums, and while that frees the guys from the danger of a sophomore slump (how can it be a “slump” when it’s the same formula?), it also means that Babelprobably isn’t going to win many new fans. That’s okay though: it was evident from the day they released “I Will Wait” as a single that they were of the “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” camp. The fact that the song is predictable and derivative of their old style doesn’t really matter. It rolls along with a rollicking country lilt and boasts a truly gorgeous bridge section, building in a manner that makes these guys sound like what U2 would have been if they had started out as a folk act rather than a punk band with arena rock ambitions. The group, consisting of Mumford, Ben Lovett, Winston Marshall, and Ted Dwane (all of them multi-instrumentalists) dominates these arrangements and sounds as crisp and clean as any set of musicians in the mainstream today. Even if the songs they’re playing aren’t terribly complex, it’s hard not to at least passingly enjoy what they do here.

Album highlight “Ghosts That We Knew” is a gorgeous torch song that recalls Sigh No More’s closing track, “After the Storm,” and it’s hard to see why it doesn’t carry the album out here. “But the ghosts that we knew will flicker from view/And we'll live a long life,” sings Mumford in the refrain, a wistful tone accenting his cryptically nostalgic lyrical craft. It’s the kind of song you would expect to hear around campfires on late autumn nights, the sort of gorgeous elegy your uncle pulls out, in a moment of clarity, at the end of a rambunctious night with the family. Perhaps that’s what a lot of people hate about this band: they feel conventional, like your friend’s brother’s folk band that jammed a few nights a week during college and played bars every once in awhile. But that’s also their greatest strength: they sound like they could be your friends, your family. Their songs ring with truth and honesty and simplicity, with lyrics that sometimes don’t make a lick of sense, but which are fun to sing along to anyway. In that sense, the grand production feels a bit out of place, like Dravs’ spotless work doesn’t really fit the character of the band. But they still find the intimacy in songs like “Lovers’ Eyes,” even with a horn section that barrels in four minutes through, or the bare-bones acoustic work of “Reminder,” which plays like an interlude at first, but distinguishes itself on repeat listens. At moments like these, Babel feels like home.

Babel is not a great album, but it doesn’t really need to be. The songs are too similar, and the album loses its way a bit as it goes (though the fantastic “Below My Feet” adds some much needed climactic heft in the penultimate position). But within these songs, there is a band with a palpable love for what they are doing, and even if they missed the boat on widespread musical respect three years ago, I can still appreciate them for that. Frankly, I’m happy there’s someone making this kind of music in the mainstream, and even happier that there seems to be a market for it. Maybe someday, folk music will worm its way back into the public consciousness, but until then, Mumford & Sons are sort of functioning as the champions of an age gone by. That’s not a bad role to play though, and based on my recent experiences with top 40 radio and the deplorable noise that my roommates put on at parties, you really can do a hell of a lot worse.

Jason Mraz - Love is a Four Letter Word

Jason Mraz - Love is a Four Letter Word

Atlantic Records, 2012

Three and a half stars

Jason Mraz has been a presence in the pop music world since his debut, Waiting for My Rocket to Come, dropped back in 2003, but he became an industry behemoth in 2009 when the gratingly catchy "I'm Yours" took over the airwaves. To say that song overstayed its welcome would be a vast understatement, and it's one of those pop hits that I never, under any circumstances, want to hear again, but the rest of the album that spawned it (We Sing, We Dance, We Steal Things) was a decent mix of Michael Jackson-esque pop and acoustic balladry, and I still give some of those songs spins every once in awhile. Listening through Mraz's catalog, it's clear that he has a diverse side to him that most pop singer/songwriters don't attempt (his eclectic sophomore album, 2005's Mr. A-Z, hit everything from hip-hop to opera), but his latest, Love is a Four Letter Word doesn't breach a lot of new territory. That's fine, since the 12 songs (13 if you count the hidden track) here are easy, breezy summer-pop gems and since Mraz doesn't try to blatantly rewrite any of his previous hits, but overall, this record is a fairly straightforward one, offering just what most would expect from Mraz, and not a whole lot more.

It doesn't help a lot that Love is a Four Letter Word kicks off with its weakest track, the hippy-folk, Bob Marley-aping "Freedom Song." It's pleasant enough, with horn sections added for extra effect, but the chorus of back-up vocalists comes across as over-the-top, and the song never rises above its cheesy, self-serious lyric. Things get better quickly though, with a trio of surefire radio singles filling slots 2-5. Best is "I Won't Give Up," which bears an ineffable hook and a splendid, earnest vocal from Mraz (who I've always believed to be one of the most technically gifted singers in the pop music world). The other two - "Living in the Moment" and "The Woman I Love" - will be too sugary for many, but those with a soft spot for well-crafted pop music will find themselves whistling the melodies after a single listen. The same goes for songs like "Frank D. Fixer" (despite clunky lyrics), or album-highlight "93 Million Miles," a glorious slice of summer pop that will probably make it onto countless mixtapes and playlists during the upcoming season. The latter epitomizes the laid back, breezy nature of this record, and while that's not necessarily a quality that's going to lend Love is a Four Letter Word much lasting value in the long run, it's hard not to enjoy it for its immediacy.

Then, three-quarters of the way through the record, Mraz makes a sudden and jarring turn from summer-pop record into break-up album territory. The transition doesn't quite work, mostly because the intimate songs that close out the record, stuff like "Who's Thinking About You Now" and "In Your Hands," sound like they would have felt infinitely more at home on this record's predecessor than they do here. Luckily the songs, especially the latter, are good enough to not completely derail the album's flow (which up to this point is seamless), and the closer, called "The World as I See It," is a sonic feast, bursting with strings, vocal harmonies, bells, and electric guitar accents that carry the album out in grand fashion. Mraz's voice, which rises slowly out of the texture to nail a glory note at the song's climax, before melting back into a final chorus, sounds immaculate. "Coming Over," the hidden track, is nearly as good, with a falsetto-laden vocal line and a driving drum rhythm combining to form an irresistible nighttime atmosphere.

There are a lot of good songs on Love is a Four Letter Word, and they make for an enjoyable and relaxing listen, but the album as a whole never becomes more than the sum of its parts and that keeps it from standing alongside the year's best pop releases. Mraz has never sounded better, and he clearly knows how to write a memorable hook, but his lyrics too often drift into trite territory, and the album never quite decides what it wants to be. It's a solid collection, one that I can see myself playing, in bits and pieces, a lot throughout this summer, and one that will probably land somewhere with my slew of honorable mentions at the end of the year, but probably not one I will ever love. Mraz is a talented melodist, and an even better singer, and his pop songs are fun, I just wish that he would shed his formulaic format more often than he does. When he plays things a little bit looser, like with the deep rhythmic groove of "5-6," or with a lot of the stuff from Mr. A-Z, he comes off as a lot more interesting than he does on his radio hits. As is, Mraz sits in the middle of the mainstream road, better than contemporaries like Jack Johnson and Gavin DeGraw, but not ready to play in the ranks of John Mayer, Matt Nathanson, or Mat Kearney. He certainly has the talent to get there, but I think he's going to need to take a few more risks - or at very least, write some better lyrics - before he can make the jump.

Train - California 37

Train - California 37

Columbia Records, 2012

Three stars

I can't say I've ever been a fan of Train, nor have I, until now, ever listened to a full-length album by them, but that hasn't stopped their long line of pop singles from managing to constantly pervade my everyday existence. From their breakout hits ("Meet Virginia" and "Drops of Jupiter," which were all over the place in my radio-listening days), to the singles from their third record, My Private Nation, which actually managed to make it onto a few mixes I burned for myself back in my pre-album listening phase ("Calling All Angels," "When I Look to the Sky"), all the way to the incredibly annoying cultural ubiquity of "Hey Soul Sister" back in 2010, which gave the band a renaissance of sorts, Train has managed to stick around, even as many of their early contemporaries have diminished in presence and disappeared. At very least, the San Francisco natives deserve a commendation for not only surviving, but thriving in a decade that largely rejected their brand of pop-rock. And despite the fact that I've never really liked this band, or that lead singer Pat Monahan's voice has always had a strong knack for getting on my nerves, the band's tendency to tour with some of my favorite guys making music today (Butch Walker, Matt Nathanson, Mat Kearney), has recently made me wonder if there's more to them than I thought; more than just the singles, at least.

Producer extraordinaire Butch Walker.

California 37, the band's sixth (!?) full length LP, finds them in the wake of their most successful hit ever, basking in the same brand of sunny hooks and shiny pop-production that made "Hey Soul Sister" such a success. And really, it's not so bad. Make no mistake, Train's music is just about as disposable as ever, but songs like opener "This'll Be My Year," which plays like a modern-day update on Billy Joel's  "We Didn't Start the Fire" (complete with a massive refrain-chorus), or the sweeping mid-tempo balladry of "We Were Made For This," which features one of Monahan's best vocal performances to date (at least that I've heard), as well as an explosive guitar solo mid-way through and a bizarre but atmospheric bagpipe outro, are pleasing and well-executed. If those two songs are among the best on the album, then it's hard to not see Butch Walker, who lends his writing talents to both, as one of the prime reasons. Walker, who has made a name for himself writing and producing for the likes of Avril Lavigne, Pink, and Weezer, knows his way around a hook better than just about anyone in the business today, and his fingerprints are all over this album, whether he's receiving writing credits or production kudos. Walker produced half the record himself, and shared duties with Espionage (the production duo who manned the boards for "Hey Soul Sister") for the rest, and throughout, he brings something to Train's music that has been lacking in the past. His presence is palpable on album closer "When the Fog Roles In," which recalls the band's '90s alt-rock roots, thanks to its piano-led orchestration and atmospheric flourishes of organ, brass, and guitar, or on the second single "Feels Good At First," whose pleasant acoustic-guitar loop and folk-pop aesthetic make for a song that wouldn't be so unwelcome as a dominating radio force.


 These songs were written and recorded while the band (and Walker) toured in support of their last album (2009's Save Me San Francisco), and as a result, they have a looser, more spontaneous feel to them than is usually present in modern pop music (Train's included). The cover depicts a classic car roaring down a sunlit highway, and that's fitting for a record that would be perfectly well suited for a spur-of-the-moment summertime road-trip: these songs are drenched in the kind of sunsoaked melodies that have formed the backbone for many a brilliant summer record, with hooks the size of houses and dynamic instrumentation. Songs like the pop-countrified "Bruises," complete with a guest vocal from country singer Ashley Monroe, or "Sing Together," which is essentially a rewrite of "Hey Soul Sister," right down to the chord progression and ukulele accompaniment, are poised to take over your local radio station this summer, while even the less commercially viable options are loaded with pop-sheen, from the Mariachi-influenced verses of "50 Ways to Say Goodbye" (and the skyscraping chorus they explode into), or the whistle-led "You Can Finally Meet My Mom," which is a lot of fun despite dumb lyrics.

But even despite Walker's welcome presence and a lot of enjoyable songs, Train are still the same band they've always been, and California 37 does end up falling into a lot of the same traps that have plagued most of their singles for the past fifteen years. Monahan stumbles upon a sincere line here and there, but for the most part, his lyrics are gimmicky and dumb, and in the worst cases, completely nonsensical. His songwriting partners (Walker and the guys from Espionage, among others) help to temper that habit on the album's best songs, but it's allowed to run wild on many of the album's more "commercial" tracks, and as a result, those end up bringing down a record that I actually could have seen myself listening to a lot this summer. First single "Drive By" is a particularly egregious offender ("When you move me, everything is groovy/They don't like it, sue me, mmm way you do me"), but drivel like "Mermaid" and the title track don't really help the band's case either. Monahan's pop music clichés and unfunny pop culture references extend beyond those three tracks, but in most cases, the melodies are strong enough to render them harmless. When Train is trying to play towards today's pop-music trends, they sound awkward and strained, and the results are as grating as the worst singles the genre has to offer; when they play it straight, they land somewhere between Counting Crows-lite and sugary pop singer/songwriters like Jason Mraz and Gavin DeGraw. Neither version is transcendent by any means, but overall, California 37 is a pleasant surprise from a band I've written off more times than I can count: it's disposable and largely forgettable, and it's not going to get anywhere near my end-of-the-year list, but it's fun, and every once in awhile, that's enough.