Babel - Mumford & Sons: Second Offering Up To Scratch?

Some genres of music are well past their sell-by date in terms of the younger generation. Opera, jazz and Billy Rae Cyrus are so seldom on teenager’s iPods anymore that they might as well not exist.

Folk was one of these genres until Mumford & Sons burst onto the scene in 2009 with their debut album, Sigh No More. This was an album that mashed together folk, rock, country & western and a brass band into a magnificent cacophony of sounds that lifted the spirit, raised the hairs and grabbed the interest of people all across the UK and beyond. It crossed genres. It sold extremely well. It won, and was nominated for, so many awards that it would be boring to list them all here.

A tough act to follow, then.

So, Babel. An album which had to deliver, to prove that Mumford & Sons are not just a one-album-wonder. And did it?

Well… I think it did.

Those of you expecting the ferocity of Sigh No More will probably be a bit disappointed. On the flipside, those of you who thought that it was a bit too powerful for your liking will surely be overjoyed, because what we have here is a slower, more melodic offering that doesn’t so much smash your ears into your skull as give you one of those massages where it’s soft and gentle and then there’s a bit where they snap your arm off.

A weird metaphor, but it works.

Babel starts off much the same as Sigh No More, with an upbeat, uplifting melody and crashing percussion forming the title track. From there, you are taken on a musical journey, ranging from the slow, beautifully measured Ghosts That We Knew and Below My Feet, to the crashing intensity of I Will Wait, Hopeless Wanderer and Broken Crown. If you buy the deluxe version, there’s even a cover of the Simon and Garfunkel classic The Boxer. Sure, there are a couple of tracks which seem rather like they’re there to fill in otherwise empty spaces (thinking specifically of Lover’s Eyes and Reminder), but as a whole, the album really works. In many ways, it feels rather like Sigh No More version 2- in fact, Mumford & Sons wrote several of the songs on Babel during/just after the production of their first album, and even borrowed aspects of songs previously released on EPs. And yet they are so totally different, with totally differing moods and tempos.

As much as I would like to leave it at that and say that Babel is a brilliant album, alas, there is one problem, one fly in the ointment. And it concerns the feel of the album. Sigh No More sounded and felt like Mumford & Sons made it in a dusty hall, with boards on the windows and agricultural machinery left abandoned on the floor. There was a roughness to it that made your inner caveman grin like a monkey on meth. On the contrary, Babel feels like the band recorded it sitting in armchairs, wearing slippers and fluffy dressing gowns. It feels studio-made. It doesn’t feel the same. It doesn’t feel like Mumford & Sons. Where’s the anger, the raggedness, the sheer volume?

That said, it’s nice to hear that slower, more emotional side of the group, to perhaps gain more of an insight of the writers. It’s a weirdly contrasting set of opinions to have, and even weirder to try and write a review around. Pity me.

If you put Babel and Sigh No More together, it’d be one amazing album. As standalones, too, both Mumford & Son’s works can hold their own. But don’t go listening to the latter with expectations of getting more of the former. There’s less energy, less anger and volume, yet more emotion, more melancholy melody.

Babel is not the same as Sigh No More. But that’s not to say it isn’t good.

A Lack of Momentum

I have not posted anything on this here blog for a good while now. This has been for a multitude of reasons. First off, I had exams which were, in my mind at least, a lot more important than debating politics or whatever other essentially trivial matters may have caught my fancy. Y'know, my future and all that.


Then I tried to write something, I really did. I have about four unpublished blogs staring at me out of my computer screen, all of which I started, but which then lost their appeal. I lost interest, I lost motivation, I lost my ability to create a coherent sentence. It kinda sucked. The subject of these posts ranges from Doctor Who to music to London to finishing compulsory education- which brings me on neatly to my next point.


After my exams were done, I had no will to do... anything, really. I was on study leave, but there was no more studying to be done. What to do? I asked myself. The best answer appeared to be to wake up a some point in the afternoon, not eat anything, and spend the time between leaving bed and rejoining it on the computer, playing games and watching Youtube videos. And that is the point I am at at this moment. 


As I type this, I have a video about how Snooki is a waste of space playing on the right-hand side of my screen, with this text box open on the left. My PS3 in on behind me, running Gran Turismo 5. My iTunes is currently paused from playing Pillars by Foreign Fields (you won't have heard of them) - but only because I am watching the aforementioned video. As soon as that is finished, the play button shall be pressed again.


This is a pretty boring-ass way to spend all your days. I needed something to break the endless monotony. Fortunately, help came in the form of friend, and fellow blogger, Floraidh (you can visit her page using this link). She has had the bright idea of bringing in her friends to write pieces for her blog, turning it into a sort of compendium of the thoughts and ideas that occur to those of a late-teenage disposition. And I was to be her guinea pig.


Well, this was something to get excited for! I had a goal, a purpose, and most importantly of all, a deadline. I wrote and wrote, my passion for blogging rekindled... until, that is, I finished. The post went up (and it was very popular, I don't mind telling you- read it here), and I was without a purpose once more.


So this is where this blog comes in. I am now making it my goal to post a blog at least once a week. Hopefully, this will galvanise me into a writing machine, positively churning out ideas and words onto the page. "What was that about unfinished posts? Well, consider them finished!" "You want a post about the state of the economy? In an hour? You got yourself a deal!"


...Or I'll just lapse into a creative coma, turning out post after post about cats. Or different kinds of rock.
I hope that doesn't happen.

Just Call Me Gok Fraser

^^^Please don't, that's a terrible nickname.

Hello, and welcome to Fraser's Seven Step Guide To Looking Between Acceptable And Well Fit In Most Clothes Even If You Are A Munter.

I'm working on the title.

Step One: Throw out all your old clothes. Except the pieces you really want to keep. And then some other ones. Ooh, and that one, your Auntie Gladys gave you that one. And those trousers, you'll fit into them one day...

Step One point Five: Take back all the clothes you threw away.

Step Two: Look in the newest fashion magazines for all the latest trends. (Warning- these trends will only be applicable for the next twenty minutes.)

Step Three: Accessorise. Necklaces, toerings, earrings, hairbands, anything will do. Especially bracelets. From a veritable armful to a single metal chain, the effect is immediate; you will instantly gain an amazingly annoying rattle every time you move your arms.

Step Four: Get an ugly friend. This will greatly improve your comparative looks. The uglier they are, the better you look, so why not customise their face with scars, spots and third degree burns?

Step Five: Take a reality check. You will never be as attractive as the hunks and hunkettes that adorn the covers of gossip Bibles Now or OK, so stop trying to be. (Note: if you are one of the previously mentioned hunks or hunkettes, why the fuck are you reading this? Go and get your spray tan/vajazzle/pec implant/ botox injection already.)

Step Six: Buy all your clothes from Primark and TK Maxx. I'm not even making a joke here, they're really quite good quality. Cheap, too. I actually got my Prom suit from TK Maxx- it's really nice...

Step Seven: Dress like your friend. Seriously, they won't find it creepy or anything.

Step Eight: Shape up. But whatever you do, do NOT get Shapeups. They look like someone modelled a shoe on a banana.

Step Nine: Don't promise a list of ten things if you can't remember the tenth.

Step Ten:

British Public In The Doghouse

I've been getting a bit ranty recently, haven't I?


Well, I'll soon put a stop to that.


So. Britain's Got Talent ended at the weekend, in a thrilling final that brought out the best in all of its contestants. It was very intense- no-one could call who would eventually claim victory. I was frequently on the edge of my seat, cheering as an act I liked did well. It was everything a talent show final should be. 
There was only one problem... a fucking dog won.


Now, I'm sorry but, as talented as the dog undoubtably is, and as good as his trainer is, when the best talent Britain can apparently muster is a dog walking across a desk, you know there's something gone wrong somewhere.
A dog beat Loveable Rogues, a wonderfully jaunty three-man band who will surely have a career after this show. A dog beat Jonathan and Charlotte, two incredible opera singers. A dog beat a literally thousands of other talented individuals and groups to become the ambassador of talent from the Great British public to the Queen. 
A dog. 
a fucking dog.
No wonder we never do well at Eurovision.


It worries me a great deal that this public, the public that has, in the past, voted now-stars Will Young, JLS, Diversity and (sort of) Susan Boyle to prominence, decided that this time, the singers, the dancers, the magicians and the comedians could all go fuck themselves, because they want to see a puppy stand on its hind legs in front of royalty. The obvious reason for this sudden change, of course, is the 'cute factor'. People like cute animals, and they also like tricks, so combine the two, and what do you get? A sure-fire recipe for success, apparently. 
I would have preferred a disappearing act myself, but there you are.
Sure, Pudsey (for that is what this dog was called) is cute, but Pudsey can't synchronised-swim inside a giant fish tank. Pudsey can't sing and play the ukulele and guitar. Pudsey can't do anything that he hasn't been trained to do. I'm quite sure that, given the choice, Pudsey would rather curl up in his doggy bed and go to sleep, gnawing on a nice pack of Dentastix™.


Then again, it could be that Simon Cowell liked the dog act, and so it won. This is one of the unwritten rules of television. It just happens, and no-one questions it.


The point I'm trying to make here is that something happened on the evening of Saturday 12th May 2012 that annoyed me a bit. All these other, very deserving contestants were pushed aside by the voters because they were lost in puppy-dog eyes... literally.
I thought we were made of harder stuff than this. "Fight them on the beaches". "Bulldog spirit". "British Brains". "Don't let a fucking dog win a talent show". Clearly I was wrong. Clearly we are a nation of doddery old dears who have plates with pictures of kittens adorning our gas fireplaces, and who would rather swap a pint of bitter for a cup of tea in a flowery mug and a custard cream. This saddens me.


I would've written this sooner after the actual show, but I was too consumed by depression to vent my anger upon the keyboard. I guess I have now.


Oh dear. I said I was going to be less ranty, didn't I?
Maybe next time.


...


But seriously, a fucking dog?!

Twitter, And Why Some Beliebers Are Arseholes

Who wants to see a Twitter argument?
Okay, here it is:

LegendKidrauhl (tweeting generally): You miss being a Belieber so you came crawling back to Justin? Newsflash honey, Beliebers don't miss you and you can gladly fuck off.

frazzlecake96: @LegendKidrauhl I'm not a Belieber, but I don't think Justin would want you, as his 'fan', to act so vindictively towards others.

LegendKidrauhl: @frazzlecake96 I'm sorry, but I think you should actually know what's happening before judging me as his fan.

frazzlecake96: @LegendKidrauhl He made nu music, so ppl restartd listening to him yh? Why hate people purely b/c they like anothr artist as well as Justin?

LegendKidrauhl: @frazzlecake96 Lol, no. It's just this particular "DirectionTunes" who left Justin for One Direction, hated on him and now she's back.

frazzlecake96: @LegendKidrauhl but u saw tht pic of him DMing her- surely tht shows he dont mind, coz shes back now- why fight wars he dont want u 2 fight?

LegendKidrauhl (tweeting generally): Okay, stop with this DirectionTunes shit. She's getting the attention she wants. She will leave Justin sooner or later, again.

frazzlecake96: @LegendKidrauhl Like you're not asking for attention by extending this entire thing over several tweets? Hypocrisy at its finest...

I think I won.
The problem with these kinds of people is that, once they are set on an opinion, nothing will sway them from it- reasoning, common sense, a hit over the head with a saucepan, none of it works. I am sure that, were Justin Bieber aware of how this ignorant little girl was acting, he would not be best pleased. Then again, I don't care- I just wanted to start an argument and this LegendKidrauhl seemed like a prime target. I wasn't hating on Bieber (although he really does make the most boring pop music), I just thought she was being incredibly spiteful to this other girl who merely went off him for a while and then realised that she liked him again. It's a free world (mostly), and anyone can like whatever music they please, whenever they want to like it. But these people seem to think that that isn't true.
The part that really got me though, was when she said "Beliebers don't miss you and you can gladly fuck off." I don't think anyone listens to an artist or band purely to become part of the fanbase. If she wants to listen to generic pop music, let her listen! (And anyway, she went from Justin Bieber to One Direction- they're basically the same, there's just a higher number of lesbian lookalikes in 1D.)

(By the way, the only reason I follow LegendKidrauhl is because of all the ignorant bullshit that seems to spew from her keyboard. Here is an example: 
"50 Cent And Justin Bieber is still trending. Looks like the black community approves of Justin now." 
See what I mean?)

If there is one thing that sites like Twitter and Tumblr have done, it's made their users feel incredibly self-important. 
"Oh, I'll just retweet a GIF of Justin smiling, and loads of people will retweet and favourite it because they all love me and think I'm so cool."
Get a life.
Go outside, get friends that you don't solely communicate with over Twitter, stop posting about Justin Bloody Bieber every two minutes, and get a life.

/rant.

Facepalm

Boris Johnson. 
What can one say about Boris Johnson? A man whose voice harks back to aristocracy gone by. A man whose hair defies the laws of gardening. A man who has just been re-elected as Mayor of London.


This man is quite possibly the best thing in British politics. His inane ramblings about welfare and all the other things that politicians pretend to care about make an otherwise serious news program into an episode of Have I Got News For You. He rides around everywhere on a bicycle, looking like an overlarge, suit-wearing toddler. He fell over in a river once. He is just the best person.


And from that to Facebook. Yes, I know it's not even linked in the slightest at all ever. I just felt like I had to express my sincere adoration for this most bumbling and brilliant of men, okay? Deal with it. Haters gonn' hate.


Aaaaaanyway... Facebook. It's a small social networking site, not too many members, you probably haven't heard of it. YES OF COURSE I AM JOKING EVERYONE WHO HAS EVER LIVED HAS HEARD OF FACEBOOK. And that is part of the problem. It has the power to make outcasts of the people who have not entered this universe. On the other hand, there are people who spend so much time on Facebook that they become outcasts in the real world. You know, the types of people that are never off Farmville and alienate their friends with requests for ingredients in Café World? 


Then there are the ones who LITERALLY POST ABOUT EVERYTHING THAT HAPPENS IN THEIR DAY. "omg such a bad day today :'( </3" Yeah? Well, isn't that just great? I was going to have a nice relaxing evening, but now I have to worry about how upset you are over some trivial little piece of shit.


There are also, of course, the ones that use Facebook to boost their egos. Such posts as "Let's see how many likes we can get for this baby with cancer :(" infuriate me to such a point where I have to walk away and shout at an inanimate object for a while. Like a bin. It is obvious that the people who post these specks of annoying pseudo-sympathy are in it purely for the 3,000 or so people that will like their photo. And then they comment underneath saying "Subscribe to me here! I'll make you a fansign :D" First of all, what the fuck is a 'fansign'? And secondly, why would I want to subscribe to a page full of this utter crap, you braindead, egotistical twat?


Attention-seekers, too, flood the ranks of this army of idiots. "Oh god, my face looks so ugly in this pic..." Then why upload it? Why put up a picture of yourself that clearly doesn't meet up to your personal standards of how you want to look? 
Oh yeah, because of the flood of comments that follows. 
"So beautiful! :D" 
"You look so good in this <3" 
"Hey gorgeous! ;)"
Such people make me want to run over such people with a truck.


Of course, there are many, many decent, lovely, caring, friendly, funny, brilliant, beautiful people on Facebook. They are just overshadowed by the dickheads. And it seems like these barnacles on the face of Facebook are putting people off altogether.


You know it's bad when people are returning to Myspace.

It's The Massive Things...

D'you know how difficult it is to look good?

It's a common symptom of the debilitating disease known as 'adolescence', but that doesn't take away from the fact that many of Teenworld's population suffers from sometimes crippling auto-aesthetic dislike. 
It comes for us when we least expect it, like when we're watching TV. Adverts for face scrubs that feature spotless, tan, thin youths with gleaming white smiles (for some reason, these people seem to use the same product on their face as their teeth) and a crowd of adoring peers surrounding them. Makeup promotions with photoshopped-to-shit faces apparently showing what you will look like if you smear this brown paste all over your blemish-ridden face. Soap operas where even the lowliest of teen hoodlums have miraculously acquired a cure-all spot-murderer, and most of the population appears to be really very attractive. 
And able to fit into size 5 jeans.

What makes it all the worse is that there are people in every school that have had just the same aesthetic blessing that God has, in his slightly misguided wisdom, not bothered with for the rest of us. You've seen them, haven't you? The ones who never once have had to scrub their face red raw, never had to squeeze a persistent yellowhead that seems to have claimed squatter's rights upon the end of their nose, never had to worry about their looks because it all just seems to work. Naturally, like they were born with the perfect metabolism, and without grease glands underneath their skin.

The trouble is, such people are usually either the nicest humans you've ever had the sincere pleasure of meeting, or absolute dickheads. This presents a problem either way: if they're nice, you can't exactly go up and smack them round the face for being so goddamn handsome/pretty. However, if they're dickheads, then they're more than likely also stronger than you, so if you slapped them, they'd Hulk Smash you into the carpet before you could even raise a hand to protect your pustule-encrusted face.

Even clothes are hard to get right. I only fairly recently started to really care about how I dressed and how my hair looked. Now I look back at photos from as close as a year ago and I cringe inwardly at how dorky I must have looked.
Yes, I just used the word 'dorky' in the 21st century. Get over it.
As an added bonus, I tend to wear hoodies a lot. Now, apparently, pockets on hoodies aren't for use as pockets. No, they're 'decorational'. Whatever mum. Anyway, I use these pockets rather a lot when I wear hoodies. The upshot of this is that they have now stretched or something, so now it looks rather like I have a small potbelly whenever I put one on. 
Either that, or I'm pregnant.
And I don't think I'm pregnant.
...

Where did I put that pregnancy test?

I constantly worry about how I look, how my clothes look, how I sound. I don't think I'm in any way attractive. I hate my smile. I think my laugh is annoying. I think my breath stops being minty fresh far too soon after the toothbrush has left. I hate my spots. My head is too big. I'm awkward in social situations, especially with girls. I'm not thin/muscly enough. I'm not athletic. I'm not good enough.
These thoughts affect me every day, as I'm sure they do many, many other people my age or similar. And I'm sure that these people who I described as 'attractive' and 'blessed' feel much the same way. The problem is that none of us know what anyone else is thinking. That's the real issue- because not one person knows what another really, truly thinks of them, they assume the worst.

I've fairly ranted on a bit haven't I? Oops...

So, let me take this moment to tell you, whatever age, gender, height, weight or colour you are, you are beautiful. You are brilliant, you are amazing. You are special, so don't hate what makes you so. The people who talk to you do so because they want to know you. The ones that don't, that look at you weirdly, that insult you or put you down... they feel inadequate, and so they want you to feel the same as them. Bring you down to their level. You carry on living as you want, soon enough they'll see how how you are and try it for themselves. So what if you have spots? So what if you have a big bum? So what if you don't look like the models who starve themselves and live a life of never being able to eat what they want? So what if you can't fit into those jeans? They're just not special enough for you. Don't change yourself because someone's making you do it. 

Be yourself- it's the best thing you can be.




I should be a motivational speaker.