Quick Track Review: Mumford & Sons – “The Wolf”
I won’t lie. I am not a Mumford & Sons kind of guy. Sure, they seem like humble, fun loving gents 
with legitimate talent, but their upbeat modern folk stylings of album’s past just don’t do it for me. Like Coldplay, Mumford & Sons is probably a band I should appreciate. Yet, I feel next to nothing when they come through my speakers.
The big story surrounding Mumford & Sons now is that they’ve gone electric – no longer will the band rely on an acoustically driven sound for world domination. Instead, they’ll plug-in, step out of the box and see where the currents take them.
With “The Wolf,” the second new single to emerge from the band’s forthcoming Wilder Mind album, Mumford & Sons sound as if they listened a lot to the 2013 Kings of Leon album, Mechanical Bull. There is a southern-style yearning, but fortunately no true attempt at a southern drawl.
Meanwhile, the uptempo instrumentation and vulnerable yet scowling lyrical subject matter could very well already be something that Caleb Followill has locked away in his vault for the next KOL album.
That’s not to say that “The Wolf” is a bad song. It’s just not overly creative or earth-shattering. For Mumford & Sons fans that appreciate the band for providing an alternative to what generally fills rock radio, then this should be viewed as a disappointment.
It’s one thing to test out a new sound, it’s another thing to unleash it prematurely and have it be an album’s primary promotional tool. This is something Mumford & Sons could’ve quietly and gradually pushed into their albums – forcing the issue here hasn’t done them any favours.
Mumford & Sons may now be better attached to electricity, but somehow this song lacks the spark that fans have come to expect from the band.
-Adam Grant
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