Mumford & Sons - Wilder Mind

Since their debut album dropped in 2009, Mumford & Sons have become synonymous with the mainstream folk-rock revival. However briefly, these lads from London got guitars, banjos, mandolins, and kick drums back on the radio, paving the way for similar bands—from The Lumineers and Of Monsters and Men to The Avett Brothers and The Lone Bellow—to find their own mainstream success. The band's first album, Sigh No More, was like Diet Fleet Foxes, loaded with stirring folk-rock choruses and plenty of Appalachian folk ambiance. It wasn't a great record, but it wasn't hard to see why songs like "Little Lion Man," "The Cave," and "Winter Winds" became hits: they offered digestible twists on traditional roots music in a way that the radio world hadn't seen since the 90s. Babel, the 2012 sophomore effort that won Mumford & Sons an Album of the Year Grammy, was more or less a carbon copy of its predecessor, and while the record wasn't bad, it was boring enough that I haven't gone back to it since I wrote a far too positive review of it for this very website.

Bottom line, Mumford & Sons really needed a new direction on their third LP. Since Babel, frontman Marcus Mumford has proven that he can be much more interesting outside of the band, whether by contributing to the soundtrack for 2013's Inside Llewyn Davis, or by serving as one-fifth of The New Basement Tapes—the band that producer T. Bone Burnett assembled last year for an ambitious project based around discarded Bob Dylan lyrics. The New Basement Tapes especially had me wondering what Mumford might cook up as a solo artist, as songs like "When I Get My Hands on You" and "Stranger" proved to be stronger and more palatable than virtually anything from the first two Mumford & Sons LPs.

Luckily, spending a year more or less ensconced in the legacy of Bob Dylan seems to have shaken Mumford awake. Wilder Mind, the Mumford & Sons' third album, is a complete departure from everything they've done in the past. Gone are the banjos; gone are the mandolins and kick drums; gone, even, are the acoustic guitars. Right from the moment a reverb-drenched electric guitar riff opens the album on "Tompkins Square Park"—a song that sounds like a cross between Sam's Town-era Killers and Turn on the Bright Lights-era Interpol—it's clear that the old Mumford & Sons is gone, replaced by a darker, older, and more interesting band. "No flame lasts forever/Most don't even last the night," Mumford sings on the chorus. The song's pessimistic, despairing tone echoes throughout Wilder Mind, an album that loosely chronicles a breakup set against the backdrop of Manhattan's smoggy streets. Suffice to say, this is brand new territory for Mumford & Sons, and it mostly suits them very well.

By itself, "Tompkins Square Park" is arguably the best song these guys have ever written as a band. It's also immensely effective as a low-key opener, and as a table-setter for Wilder Mind's stellar first act. The song flows right into first single "Believe," a number that simultaneous addresses the frustration of a relationship that no longer works, and a crisis of religious faith; it sounds like an outtake from Coldplay's X&Y. The hat trick is completed with "The Wolf," a driving rocker that displays the band's new electric sound better than any other song on the album. In terms of compositional structure, "The Wolf" isn't so different from previous Mumford barnstormers like "I Will Wait" and "The Cave": the electric guitars churn aggressively, just like the banjos used to, and the drums pound with the same kick-drum urgency of the band's folkier past. But the volcanic pace of "The Wolf," along with a catchy melody and a convincing "rock" vocal from Marcus Mumford, makes the song something Babel never was: exciting.

After that excellent three-song stretch, Wilder Mind falls off a bit. Even with the amps turned up to 11, Mumford & Sons suffer the same pitfalls here that they always have—namely similar song structures and not-so-great lyrics. For instance, "Wilder Mind" and "Snake Eyes" are both solid tunes that suffer from having almost identical melodies, pacing, instrumentation, and mood. A big arena rock guitar solo saves the latter from being superfluous, but the similarities are tough to ignore.

The production also does this album no favors. To push themselves toward a new frontier, Mumford & Sons opted not to work with longtime producer Markus Dravs for this album. Instead, they turned to James Ford, who has in the past helmed records for bands like Arctic Monkeys and Haim—among others. Ford definitely helps the band fit into their new skin. Just like Dravs, though, his style is too clean, leaving less distinctive numbers like "Only Love" sounding both airbrushed and claustrophobic. Ford's style is a better fit when he allows the songs to have more space, like on the loose and contemplative "Monster," or on "Cold Arms," a song where the moratorium on acoustic instruments works to turn a simple Marcus Mumford solo tune into a haunting, electric-guitar-led lynchpin.

There is no doubt that these songs would have been better with a dirtier, more live-oriented aesthetic. New Basement Tapes producer T. Bone Burnett would have been a perfect fit, his dusty Americana style a match with this record's 1970s Dylan aspirations. The National's Aaron Dessner, who produced a similarly New York-obsessed LP for The Lone Bellow earlier this year, could have been even better. (Dessner provides keyboards on a few tracks instead.) Still, even if Ford plays it a bit safe and makes Wilder Mind as radio friendly as humanly possible, that fact doesn't tarnish the record too much, simply because Mumford & Sons have brought a killer set of melodies to the table this time around. Songs like "Just Smoke" and "Ditmas" are readymade concert sing-alongs, with the latter functioning as Wilder Mind's big cathartic climax. Closing track "Hot Gates," meanwhile, provides a nice note of subtlety at the end of a record that often emphasizes its loudness above all else. These are crisp, simple, and tuneful songs, and they remind us why these guys became superstars in the first place.

All told, Wilder Mind is a very solid record—albeit, one that I think Mumford & Sons will only improve upon with future releases. Marcus Mumford's best songwriting remains the stuff he did with The New Basement Tapes—potentially just because he wasn't writing the lyrics. The rest of the band, meanwhile, still needs to learn that the "start slow/quiet and crescendo to a big climax" formula gets boring when you replicate it on every track. Mumford & Sons could even stand to learn a thing or two about naming their own songs, since generic-as-hell titles like "Cold Arms," "Monster," and "Only Love" probably make this album seem less memorable than it actually is. (The song title problem was also an issue on Babel, and is one of the reasons I can't remember what any of those songs sound like even though I'm staring at the tracklist as I type this.) I'm also hopeful that, in the future, the band will find a way to meld their folk and rock sides together, instead of completely shunning one in favor of the other. Still, despite its shortcomings, Wilder Mind is a strong reset for Mumford & Sons, and gives me hope that the band will be able to build a long and interesting career—rather than just becoming a relic of what rock radio sounded like in the early 2010s.

The New Basement Tapes - Lost on the River

My love of Blood on the Tracks is well documented at this point, but there are definitely days when I think that The Basement Tapes might be my favorite Bob Dylan project. Recorded in 1967, but not released officially until 1975, The Basement Tapes brought two of the brightest musical talents of the time—Dylan and The Band—together for an invigorating set of songs. Some of the tunes they recorded (most of the ones that made it onto the original record) were Bob Dylan compositions, now-classics like “Going to Acapulco” and “You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere.” Some were traditional folk tunes. Others were covers of respected country artists like Hank Williams and Johnny Cash. And all of them had an infectious looseness that was and is incredibly rare to find on a studio album.

It’s not difficult to see why the original Basement Tapes were so loose, creative, and dynamic. There was no expectation among any session members that the tapes in question would ever be released. And so they all played with reckless abandon—no pressure, no reservations—and made one of the most incendiary records in history as a result. None of those songs had the lyrical depth or eloquence of Dylan’s finest work, nor were they as emotionally resonant as what he came up with on Blood on the Tracks. But because of the fertile and collaborative environment in which they were recorded, the songs from The Basement Tapes became classics anyway.

And that brings me to Lost on the River: The New Basement Tapes, a project assembled by legendary Americana producer T Bone Burnett to see if that old Big Pink basement had any more magic left to offer. The project was born when Dylan’s publisher contacted Burnett and asked him if he wanted to do anything with a box of unused, handwritten Bob Dylan lyrics that had recently been found. Burnett, a producer always looking for unique projects in the roots music sphere (acclaimed soundtracks for a pair of Coen Brothers films, for instance, or a music supervisor post for the television program Nashville), jumped at the chance and quickly assembled what is arguably the ultimate modern day folk super group.

Elvis Costello, Jim James (of My Morning Jacket), Marcus Mumford (of Mumford & Sons), Rhiannon Giddens, and Taylor Goldsmith (of Dawes): these are the talented musicians, singers, and songwriters tasked with turning Dylan’s outtake lyrics into fully formed songs that honor the tradition of the original Basement Tapes. Each member chose different texts and set them to music individually, choosing the words that moved them, and bringing the contributions to the recording process. Because of this process—of starting separate and then coming together—each song on this record has the distinct flavor of the person who sings lead. However, because the lyrics were all penned by Dylan, and because the songs were all arranged, fleshed out, and recorded by the full group, Lost on the River ends up feeling a good deal more cohesive than you might expect an album with five lead vocalists to sound.

Probably the most refreshing aspect of this record is that no one ever shoots for straight imitation. The New Basement Tapes may be writing songs based around Dylan’s words, and they may be paying tribute to the freewheeling nature of the original Basement Tapes, but it is testament to the talent of these five individuals that Lost on the River never sounds like an attempt to approximate Dylan’s sound. Jim James gets the closest, with numbers like “Down at the Bottom,” “Nothing to It,” and “Hidee Hidee Ho #11,” hitting upon a vintage sound not far off what Dylan and the Band cultivated all those years ago. James even sounds like he’s doing a bit of a Dylan vocal impression during the latter of those three tunes, but he’s a talented enough musician and songwriter to make his songs sound fresh. “Down at the Bottom” is particularly splendid, alternating between moody atmosphere and rousing momentum for the perfect album starter.

If James gets the closest to Dylan’s sound, Goldsmith probably strays the furthest away. A sweet-voiced folkie who has always been compared to Jackson Browne, Goldsmith is tasked here with writing the collection’s most luxuriant songs. His contributions—“Liberty Street,” “Florida Key,” “Card Shark,” and “Diamond Ring”—rely heavily on piano and acoustic guitar, with Goldsmith’s voice providing a lullaby-soft wistfulness to the dusky arrangements. The songs are pretty, particularly “Florida Key” and “Diamond Ring,” and they allow Dylan’s lyrics to breathe in a way they don’t always do on James' or Costello’s more raucous numbers, or Mumford’s more pop-centric ones. When Goldsmith sings “If I ever get back to St. Louis again, there’s gonna be some changes made” at the beginning of “Ring,” it’s the perfect delivery, landing somewhere between the scathing, whip-smart fashion in which Dylan would have sung it, and the more measured insights that Goldsmith imparts on his own records with Dawes.

The problem is, the Goldsmith songs that made the record don’t take advantage of the frontman’s true talents. The best Dawes songs are big, almost church-bound slowburns like “Something in Common” and “A Little Bit of Everything,” songs that build from slow, modest beginnings into cathartic climaxes. Here, Goldsmith’s songs are pleasant little ditties, but they are admittedly lightweight compared to what everyone else is doing. (As stupid as the descriptor is, it’s telling that Pitchfork called his contributions “adult contemporary.”) Whether Goldsmith got pushed to the side because of the presence of bigger names, or simply didn’t bring his best material to these sessions, the fact is that he’s ultimately the only one of the five songwriters who doesn’t deliver an essential highlight.

Costello is probably the group’s key member, providing two of the three best songs here. His “Lost on the River #12” is particularly stunning, playing like something that could have come off this year’s fantastic War on Drugs album, Lost in the Dream. “Six Months in Kansas City,” meanwhile, is the perfect penultimate moment for this record, a wild runaway train of a track that gets each member of the band bellowing at the top of their lungs during the chorus. It’s the most spontaneous moment on the album, and one of the few spots where this album absolutely taps into the unpredictable atmosphere of the original Basement Tapes.

Marcus Mumford also earns his paycheck, penning the record’s most instantly infectious numbers. The complaint most often tossed off about Mumford & Sons is that they write songs that all sound similar, and that their lyrics are poor. Both problems are solved here, where Mumford either writes typical Mumford & Sons melodies, but gets to use them on top of great lyrics (“Kansas City,” featuring an electric guitar shredding cameo from actor Johnny Depp) or co-writes with other members to come up with songs that sound different than anything he’s ever done (the Goldsmith co-written “When I Get My Hands on You”). In both cases, his songs are terrific.

As for Giddens, she’s fairly easily the weakest link, delivering boilerplate Americana that you could hear at virtually any folk festival (“Duncan and Jimmy”) or slowing the first side of the record to a crawl with “Spanish Mary,” a song which wouldn’t have been too out of place amidst a few of the overlong clunkers on Dylan’s own Tempest. She also contributes the worst song on the album, a second version of “Hidee Hidee Ho” that boasts an awkward rhythmic setting of Dylan’s words, not to mention some remarkably flat vocals from Giddens herself. It’s the only number on the record that sounds amateurish, and it should have been cut. Still, even if Giddens is a weak link, she justifies her presence with “Lost on the River #20,” a haunting Appalachian folk arrangement of the same text that Elvis Costello already turned into a winner. In fact, her take on the text might be the best song on the record.

Some will undoubtedly trivialize the New Basement Tapes as a novelty project. Indeed, the whole idea behind the project is high-concept, to the point where many listeners and critics probably won’t be able to get past the Dylan thing to appreciate these songs as standalones. The thing is, though, these songs are great. While the record’s bloat does kind of compromise its overall consistency and cohesion, Lost on the River probably still has more of the year’s best songs in one place than almost any other album. It doesn’t quite match the fun or looseness of the original Basement Tapes, but it’s still both a worthwhile tribute to that album, and an impressive showcase of everyone involved.

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.

On the Horizon: My Most Anticipated Albums for the Rest of 2012

2012 has been a pretty solid year thus far, as far as music releases have been concerned. The overall output of great records to grace my ears this year has actually surprised me quite a bit, considering the fact that a large percentage of my favorite artists put out material in 2011, and I thought for awhile that last year's embarrassment of riches my lead to a dearth of greatness for this year. But I should have known better: I've been discovering progressively more music than ever before during each of the years since 2008 or so, and this year has been no exception: making my end-of-the-year list is already going to be a battle. As close as I can figure, about 3 or 4 of the slots in my top ten are already spoken for, with Springsteen almost guaranteed to be sitting in the top spot. That leaves plenty of room for great new discoveries, not to mention late-year arrivals of favorite artists. And of course, there's the summer season, which generally brings out the albums that capture my consciousness the most.

Anticipation is a difficult thing: expectations can color your opinion of an album to a degree that it would never hit you as hard as it could have otherwise, but they also lend a valuable aura to the releases they surround. Very often, an artist can never top the "first" album you heard from them: I know this has proven true for a number of my favorite acts, Butch Walker, Jimmy Eat World, and Jack's Mannequin, to name a few, and year after year, I start my listens to albums from artists of that level with disappointment, and move toward elation as time goes on. I always need a few listens to shed my pre-ordained expectations of what the album should be so I can start to appreciate what it actually is. And although there are some albums that do, ultimately, end up on the "letdowns list" at the end of each year, more often, the albums that I looked forward to the most end up somewhere near the top to the list. Which brings me to the topic of this post: my top five most anticipated full-length releases on the horizon for the remainder of the year. For this group, I tried to steer towards albums that had titles, tracklists, and release dates already announced, and left the more "speculative" picks for the section at the bottom, but in a few cases, my adoration for a specific artist, plus a few hopeful indications, overpowered that impulse.

1. The Gaslight Anthem - Handwritten (out July 24th)

It's only taken about four years for Brian Fallon to evolve from a respected indie-punk frontman to a potential savior of the rock 'n' roll art. That transformation began on 2008's massive The '59 Sound, where Springsteen references, big choruses, and Fallon's desperation-laced vocals built a nighttime drive record for the ages. 2010s American Slang and last year's side project, The Horrible Crowes, were only slightly less stellar, but if "45," the first single from Handwritten, is any indication, Fallon and company might be poised to drop their masterpiece. The song sounds like vintage-Fallon, channeling equal parts Springsteen and punk-rock, and delivering an opus of crisp electric guitar tones, elegantly nostalgic poetry, and soaring vocals that suggest that, yes, Brian Fallon really might be the guy to save rock 'n' roll. I've been dying to see these guys live since the first time I heard "The Backseat," the colossal and emotional closer from The '59 Sound, and I'm hoping this record will finally bring them close to me (or, at very least, SOMEWHERE IN THE UNITED FUCKING STATES), but if nothing else, I have a very strong feeling that Handwritten could end up playing the part of my fabled "summer soundtrack" record this year, and if that's the case, then it could even have a shot at my album of the year title (against, who else? Springsteen).

2. The Wallflowers - TBA (out Fall 2012)

It's been 7 years now since The Wallflowers moniker got its last full-length release. They've toured since (I saw them for the first time in 2009), and frontman Jakob Dylan was been busy (he's released a pair of folky, acoustic-based records), but for a long time, it seemed like the '90s alt-rock band was just going to fade off into dust. That last record, entitled Rebel, Sweetheart saw The Wallflowers at the top of their game, with Dylan embracing the poetic style of his father's writing, but doing so in a context and sound that never sacrificed the band's roots. Their breakthrough album, 1996's Bringing Down the Horse will always be my favorite work of theirs, but Rebel was a terrific and lyrically brilliant set of songs that, in the many times I have listened to it since then, has both made me yearn for new material and ruminate on how, if the band were to never reunite, it would be more than an appropriate swansong. But that's all for naught now, since the band has been in the studio all year, and plans to release a new record this fall. And while I enjoyed Dylan's solo material, he never sounds better than when he's got ringing electric guitars and Rami Jaffee's soulful B3 organ swelling behind him.

3. The Killers - Battle Born (tentative title, out Fall or Winter 2012)

It's been a long time since Day & Age topped my list of biggest letdowns for the year back in 2008, and a lot of things have changed since then, including my opinion of that album. While it's certainly their worst (and that ranking includes frontman Brandon Flowers' stellar 2010 solo debut, Flamingo), Day & Age still contains a lot of great work, and I rather unfairly wrote it off back in the day. Still, I'm hoping for a return to form on the follow-up, though I must confess, I don't really know what that form would be. The band traversed a lot of musical ground, from the new-wave synths and dance-floor beats of Hot Fuss, to the Bruce Springsteen worship of Sam's Town, all the way to the eclectic and bizarre collision of those things that took place on record number three. There's not a lot that's known about their fourth, but I think we can be pretty sure of one thing: Flowers' and co. love to surprise their fans, and even if there's a return to form here, anyone looking for Hot Fuss 2 or Sam's Town 2 is setting themselves up for disappointment.


4. John Mayer - Born and Raised (out May 22nd)

Ever since I bought a copy of Heavier Things back in 2003 (which, I'm fairly certain, was the first album I ever purchased for myself), Mayer and his music have been completely entwined in my musical evolution. Since then, he's dropped an album every three years, like clockwork, but his albums have always been September, October, or November releases, and never spring/summer ones. Mayer's records have always been the kind that I'm more likely to get lost in on a long autumn day than to blare, full volume, on a summer's night, but Born and Raised, with it's promised alt-country and folk tendencies, may make a compelling argument for the contrary. Mayer has never been content to make the same album twice, and I have very little idea of what to expect from this album, whether it will be full of sunny, folky jams, or steel-guitar laden slow-burns perfect for late-night drives, but either way, I can't wait.

5. Green Day - ¡Uno!, ¡Dos!, ¡Tré! (out September 25,  November 13, and January 15, 2013, respectively)

I think it's audacious for bands to attempt double albums, but the concept of a triple-album goes right past that into insane territory. Because of that fact, and because all of Green Day's contemporaries that have attempted the double album (The Smashing Pumpkins, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Foo Fighters) have done so with distinctly mixed results, I have my reservations about this project. Green Day's last album, 2009's 21st Century Breakdown was decent but disappointing after the masterful American Idiot, and we don't know anything about this project, whether the albums will span the musical influences of the band's three members or just contain a bunch of songs from the same writing and recording sessions. Either way, the three album sequence, which will span a four month period and produce a pair of records eligible for 2012's end-of-the-year lists, is most certainly an indulgence in pop-music excess, and I'm excited to see what comes of it. It's doubtful that the band has a masterpiece on their hands here, but my highest expectations envision a ridiculously eclectic set of songs from a band that most people have always written off as distinctly one-note. Only time will tell.

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The two without release dates and titles present a difficulty for a list like this, since it's easy for a band to promise a release one day, and change their mind a few months later. That said, the word from The Wallflowers just broke today, and I have faith in them, since they've been posting pretty regular studio updates on their Facebook all year, and since Jakob Dylan isn't a guy who tends to disappear for long periods of time. I'm a whole lot less sure about The Killers, since we haven't seen any decent updates since January (or so). But Flowers has released an album every two years like clockwork since Hot Fuss broke back in 2004, and you'd think that Island would be keen on getting one of their biggest properties back into action: my guess is that we'll see that record in November or December, right in time for the Holiday Season and the sales boost it provides.

Beyond those albums, the year is still a pretty open slate, but there are some pretty exciting things on the horizon, both confirmed and scheduled (Motion City Soundtrack's Go, The Tallest Man On Earth's There's No Leaving Now, Glen Hansard's Rhythm and Repose, Sun Kil Moon's Among the Leaves, among many others) to the much more speculative list (New stuff from U2, Matchbox Twenty...I'll believe that one when I see it, and Mumford & Sons). U2 has been all over the place in terms of release rumors recently, from saying they had three different albums in the works a year or two ago, to Bono hinting that the band might be ready to call it a day. In the wake of the biggest rock 'n' roll tour in music history, it's safe to say the band has earned some time off. But since they've been toying with releasing Songs of Ascent, an album of material from around the No Line On The Horizon era, since 2010, and since they teased fans with the interesting prospects of a Danger Mouse-produced reinvention, it would be a shame for them to close the doors before at least seeing where those roads might lead. As for Matchbox Twenty, it's been ten longs years since the '90s alt-rock darlings dropped their last full-length (More Than You Think You Are, which was also their best work), a hiatus that saw both a Greatest Hits collection and a pair of decent solo offerings from frontman Rob Thomas. If the band finally makes their return this year, it will be the long overdue arrival of an album I've been waiting for since I was 11 or 12 years old, and while I'm certainly not in the same place I was back then, musically or in any other way, I'd certainly welcome a new record from those guys any day of the week.

As of now, I don't think this year will be quite the illustrious display for music that 2011 was, but if all of the albums listed above live up to expectations, and if a few albums come out of nowhere and knock my socks off (which has been happening more and more recently), then who knows?