Mumford & Sons Second Album

BABBLING ABOUT BABEL: Mumford & Sons have revealed details of their second album, Babel (Glassnote, Sept. 25), in an interview with Rolling Stone. The band wrote the majority of the LP on their tour bus and during soundchecks over the past two years. "The road has rubbed off into the album," says bassist Ted Dwane. "It's full of aliveness." While they knocked out their first album in just five weeks, they've spent a full year and a half recording the follow-up. Sigh No More producer Markus Dravs (who has also worked with Coldplay and Arcade Fire) joined the band at four different studios throughout England. The band goes for heavier emotions this time around, according to Dravs: "You might hear a little bit more of a slight flavor of darkness on a couple songs." And the band rocks harder than ever on "Lover of the Light," packing the arrangement with horns, distorted banjo and rollicking drums. But don’t expect any radical stylistic changes overall. "The ingredients are very much the same: the four core instruments and a lack of a drummer, which can give it that strange, simple, unique sort of sound," says Dwane. "I don't think we were looking to be too crazy and experimental." Adds Dravs, "The idea was always 'If it ain't broke, why fix it?'" (7/16a)