Why I've Stopped Listening to Mumford and Sons, and Why Scott Hutchinson Should Be Nicer About It

Scott Hutchinson, the lead singer of Frightened Rabbit, raised a spot of bother in the British music press the other day for saying that he "fucking hate[s]" Mumford and Sons. He proceeded to explain that he "thought the first record did something that I appreciated, but with the second they were just shoveling the same shit. And that's one of the reasons we're trying to separate ourselves, because it's a huge insult to someone who's invested in the band to give them more of the same."

Obviously, the headlines highlighted the hating and the shit-shoveling. But he does have a point, even if it's expressed in a way that will cause lots of people to miss it. In fact, I think his underlying point is spot-on, and I suspect the poor expression comes from the problem that led me to start this blog in the first place- it's not clear how to clearly and powerfully express that value without devolving into such harsh terms.

I can't speak with certainty for Hutchinson, but what I read into his statement are the same implicit values that underlay what I've defined as the Saturation Principle. I'm sure that he, like I, has listened to an enormous amount of music in his life to date, and that he therefore values new music that departs from the familiar. He clearly makes that a value in creating his own music, which I very much respect. And I hear in Mumford and Sons the same thing he apparently does; the way I think of it is that they've brought the Saturation Principle upon themselves.

I originally explained the saturation principle in terms of new bands sounding too much like others, and that is the most common way I experience it. But the less inflammatory parts of Hutchinson's statements capture very well the other scenario where the principle comes into play- when a band who stands out at first repeats themselves with so little variation that they create diminishing returns. It's happened before; Will Oldham's done too many spare acoustic albums at this point for the new one to sound fresh to me, even though I still like his more arranged work. However, Mumford and Sons are such a clear and powerful example that they now own the concept in my mind. Let's call it the Mumford Corollary.

Below are four Mumford songs- two singles from the first album, the first single from the second album, and the opener from the second album. There are three dominant instrumental characteristics I hear in each song- and they're the same three, deployed in exactly the same way:

1. A chugging guitar melody on the verses that follows the same rhythmic pattern- four or five notes, accent on the second or third note, followed by two final notes close together. (Put another way, it sounds something like ba-BA-baba.) I can't hear ANY difference between the rhythm on Roll Away Your Stone and I Will Wait, and the other two have only negligible variations.

2. A pounding kick drum that steadily plays either quarter notes (on the 4/4 songs) or on the first and fourth beat of Babel's 6/8 time signature. It arrives every time they hit a chorus, drops out for verses, then comes back louder.

3. A banjo playing steady sixteenth notes within the existing chord, which is in precise tandem with the bass drum- drops out during the soft verses, comes in to add drama at the choruses.

I liked Little Lion Man when I heard it, enough to buy the first album. Each song after that, of the four above,  has sounded progressively less interesting. Most artists have something like a signature sound, such that you know who it is when you hear them. But Mumford's appears to be based on a particularly limited range of musical characteristics- basically the three above- deployed with particularly minimal variation. By the third and fourth songs, I don't feel like I'm getting ANYTHING that isn't exactly what I've gotten before- no different instruments, no different rhythms, no different melodic approaches.

To be sure, Mumford is capable of more variation than the four songs above. I still think their strongest song is "The Cave," which goes directly against the grain of some of their methods above- a note line rather than a strum for the verse guitar, different instrumentation (the piano has a relevant countermelody), and a structure that changes keys by modulating upwards, rather than sticking with the same chords the song started with, and gradually builds rather than whipsawing between soft and loud. Now, it still sounds plenty like a Mumford song- they still use the kick drum and the banjo in exactly the same way on the choruses- but it still sounds fresher than even their newer songs, because the core characteristics of their sound are integrated with some slightly different musical decisions.

If Mumford was producing more songs that pushed and pulled their sound in even those limited ways, I might still enjoy them as much as I did after the first few songs. I'm guessing the same is true for Scott Hutchinson, whose band sounds fundamentally similar across their albums. The difference is that we're both looking to balance core sounds with new ideas- to make every song sound like both the band's song and its own unique entity. Scott's applying that value in the music he makes himself, he does a great job of it, and it's part of the reason Frightened Rabbit is one of my favorite bands. (Seriously, they're terrific. Check them out, starting with their new single, below.)

Where Scott still goes too far, though, is in saying Mumford is "insulting" its fans by following such a narrow path. Mumford and Sons are not meeting one of our shared musical values, and it's totally fair to say so. But the band certainly seems to enjoy what they're doing, and they still have plenty of fans who continue to enjoy what they're doing, and I think that's wonderful for both sides. Music is bringing them pleasure like it does for us, just in different ways. I'd prefer to focus on that shared pleasure and keep figuring out polite ways to explain why we get it in different ways.

Avoiding the Saturation Principle: My Logic(?) in Judging New Music

I'm pretty comfortable citing the Saturation Principle to explain many of the cases where I'm not interested in a certain piece of music. I'll work in future posts to further apply the principle and some nuances in the concept, but I'm sure it's there. It underlies the conscious mental process I go through when I listen a piece of music for the first time- I'm looking for something that doesn't sound familiar that has some characteristic that makes it feel like a new musical experience. If something doesn't pass the test, it's the flip side of that- it doesn't seem to expand upon the (large amount of) music I've heard before.

I have a harder time explaining for myself what helps a song or album to pass the test. I do know that I tend to have one of the following two thoughts:

1. This sounds unique. I touched on this in the original post- after 10-15 years of familiarity with a certain type of music, a twist can go a long way. I know a lot of people find the vocals on Hold Steady songs off-putting, and I can see why, especially in earlier songs like the below. But for someone who had heard plenty of music that already fit the description of raise-the-goblet-of-rock arena anthems, overlaying it with Craig Finn's half-crazed ranting made some of the more familiar characteristics sound fresh again.

This isn't to say that any twist will do. In this particular case, the unhinged quality Finn achieves by largely avoiding rhythmic and melodic integration into the song might well be too much to take if it wasn't balanced by the fact his lyrics are consistently thoughtful, vivid, even literate. (I particularly like the the image of trashy John the Baptist-type with crosses made of pipes and planks leaned up against the nitrous tanks he's taking hits from.) More broadly,  what I'm interested in listening to has always remained within the standard sorts of rock/pop/folk/blues musical forms.

In short, I know that "unique" for me is a matter of balancing the new with the familiar. What I find harder to explain why the balance works for me in a case like the Hold Steady, and doesn't for, say, Antony, who has a similarly unique voice and works within another musical form I frequently like.

2. This is [insert name of genre] done really well. Plenty of bands I like would sound perfectly normal and familiar to more casual listeners than I. I'm guessing most of you would be quick to peg the Ron Sexsmith song below as soft rock, adult contemporary, or whatever other genre term you use to the describe the types of radio stations that air Delilah and John Tesh. I just consider it a superior example of the genre.

When I try to explain why, though, I tend to lean back on terms like craftsmanship or say it's simply good songwriting- exactly the sort of language that I'm trying to expand upon here. Something "unique" tends to at least be identifiable, even if I want to better explain why some such qualities work better for me than others. But there's something more holistic to explaining an idea like craftsmanship, so it's more difficult to define what exactly that is.

For purposes of this blog, then, both parts of this logic are only starting points for discussion, ones that raise as many questions as answers. In writing about music I like here, the focus will be on how I define terms like "unique," "well-done," and "well-written" in each particular case.