Delta

Mumford and Son resisted the temptation to upend their sound for more commercial ends, with an album of carefully chosen material and plumbing even deeper declinations for lyrical insight. It’s a strategy that pays off; along with increasing anticipation, it results in a better set of songs overall.

Delta provides Mumford & Sons a wide range of inventive expressions, allowing them to stay true to their essence: blending the rustic quality of their past with a more majestic approach that underscores the heavier themes of the record. [30 Nov 2018, p.49]

Everything is weighed down with import, and that can become wearying through 14 longish songs. Still, people will relate to the universal doubts and fears that are often stirringly evoked by the music and lyrics on Delta. Mumford & Sons know their strengths and they play to them well here, proving that too much catharsis is better than not enough.

Though “experimental” may be a bit of an overstatement, the best parts of Delta prove that, in the hands of the right producer, Mumford & Sons remain capable of recording radio-ready earworms that challenge expectations (a little, at least) while still retaining the major qualities that made them superstars in the first place.

Delta reveals layers few would have thought they had. Often though, these moments of interest get flattened by a wave of arena-ready bombast. [Jan 2019, p.108]

This is a band who need to shrink back a little, switch off the emotional wind-machine, and work out how to make the personal less impersonal. [Jan 2019, p.86]

There are standout moments--the aforementioned ‘Beloved’, the full-hearted chorus of lead single ‘Guiding Light’, the delicate tinkle of piano underpinned by a dog barking in the distance on ‘October Skies’--but you must sift through these sprawling 14 tracks to find them.

On their fourth album, all pretense at rootsy authenticity is gone--this is machine-tooled stadium pop, with producer Paul Epworth in the Brian Eno role. [Jan 2019, p.22]

Delta is good but not great.

An album in which he and his reformed jug-band compatriots paradoxically reach for a musical approach both more complex and more approachable, instead landing squarely in the realm of mediocrity.

It’s a series of surprisingly coherent and original steps forward, followed by a series of steps both backwards and sideways. I’d venture to say that’s better than continuing to rummage around the status quo at least, even if the cumulative results are still decidedly average.

This kind of well-manicured production, when paired with a series of songs focused on internal journeys, ultimately has a lulling effect. There is a pulse, but it's soft and turned electronic. There is emotion, but it's been intentionally encased in a digital cocoon, one that flattens the group's bold accents (such as an embrace of vocoders) and turns Delta into soft, shimmering background music, ideal for any soothing setting you'd like.

Sadly, three minutes of mild excitement are no compensation for the 59 of tedium.

At this point Mumford & Sons know exactly what they have to do to keep the Spotify streams rolling over, and Delta feels like an exercise in box-ticking, no more, no less.

The Mums were much more likable back when they were pretending to be coal miners who churned their own butter. Compared to this stuff, that was a decent look.

The screwed sprite-like vocal effects of Picture You and Darkness Visible’s indistinct dystopian miasma (soundtracking a reading from Paradise Lost!) suggest a new identity crisis.