Mumford and Sons second album Babel is a little less Shakespeare and a little more biblical. Exactly what you’d anticipate perhaps, Sign No More the title of the debut album and the first song from it, is taken from the great William Shakespeare’s comic tragedy Much ado about nothing and the strong vain of Shakespearean language and direct quotation proliferates their debut album. To the extent that I successfully convinced myself that listening to Sigh No More whilst revising for my Elizabethan and Jacobean drama exams was aiding my productivity.

Babel is somehow darker, still singing of love and against some higher power of repression you experience the same melancholic yet determined lyrics with a more hymn like quality. With a heavy dose of biblical metaphors and language one could get carried away in an interpretation of a folk band turning against religion, but Marcus Mumford carefully interweaves this language into love songs and the effect is beautiful and mesmerising.

Babel 'Lover's Eyes'