Free Mumford and Sons.

In 2015 Mumford and Sons went electric.

After massively successful debut and sophomore albums, the British neo-folk rock band that stomped and banjo-plucked their way to the music industry's heights decided on a new direction, and asked their fans to trust them on this journey. But amid the weeping and gnashing of teeth, distant wails of "where's the banjo?" and clockwork dismissals by industry critics, it wasn't a happy journey. As I wrote in an earlier blog post, Wilder Mind was a perfectly charming rock album, but in the shadow of the folk revival M+S helped engineer it paled in comparison for many, and perhaps a majority of, fans.

Three and a half years later their newest album, Delta, strays even further from the original formula, almost as if fealty to music's possibilities and group evolution is more important to them than glowing reviews. And again, the reception is middling at best. So have M+S officially lost their way, tone-deaf to the quality of the magic they used to make? Or is there possibly another explanation?

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Sigh No More and Babel are the M+S acoustic albums, and share plenty in common: four-part harmonies, furiously syncopated guitar strumming, dramatic crescendos, excellent hooks, grandiose lyrics, and a very abused kick drum. M+S, in their old-timey vests and hats, were peddling a populist new folk that dispensed with the regional intricacies that often make historical folk difficult to penetrate.

It helps to place these albums in the context of the larger musical landscape of the late-aughts and early teens. It may be hard to remember a time when music was quiet, but singer-songwriters dominated the 2000s, and Colbie Caillat, Jason Mraz, Regina Spektor, Glen Hansard, Corinne Bailey Rae, and dozens of their contemporaries specialized in quirky, even Gallic sounds and ruminations. When Mumford and Sons and fellow British act Florence + the Machine came screaming onto the world stage in 2009, they woke everyone up. Music became big, epic, vast - everyone from Lady Gaga to Fun. to Kings of Leon to Beyonce to OK Go to Katy Perry to Sia got in on the game.

When M+S debuted, what they were doing was fresh and exciting by 21st century standards. Their stage name sounded appropriately hipster-vintage, their album cover was inscrutably indifferent, and their carefully curated look ran directly parallel to the elder Millennial men with their silly mustaches and just-burgeoning beards. Fans amassed in veritable hordes. Small-venue concerts sold out. Music festivals were abuzz. Babel was released in 2012 and was exactly more of the same; the boys won Album of the Year at the Grammys (partly to make up for them not winning Best New Artist previously). The love affair was solidified.

And then came that moment when every musical act has to decide where to go from there - risk criticism for sticking with the formula, or risk criticism for trying something new? Take your pick! I say very confidently that M+S fans would have been blissfully content with a third album of exactly more of the same, and critics would have chided them for playing it safe while still paying homage to their legacy which is the most anyone can ask for.

So they mindfully chose moving in a new direction.

Castle Rock.

I had to write to say that I won't be home anymore

'Cause something happened to me while I was driving home

And I'm not the same anymore

As part of this newest wave of filming Steven King adaptations, Hulu has released the ten-episode series "Castle Rock" (all episodes streaming now). It is written by Sam Shaw and Dustin Thomason and based in the King multiverse, set in his oft-used fictional, foreboding town of Castle Rock, Maine and making frequent nods to past literary horrors. The story is new, and as mentioned not penned by King, but tries mightily to carry the spirit and underlying philosophy of his work.

The series is made to appeal to both the rabid and the casual King fan; you do not need an intimate knowledge of his canon to understand and enjoy it. I personally have only read two of his short story collections and seen a handful of his films, but his writing is so iconic, so permanently etched into the fabric of modern American society, that the odd reference to Cujo or The Shining is immediately recognized. (The series also features at least three actors who have been in previous King films: Sissy Spacek of Carrie, and Bill Skarsgard and Chosen Jacobs from the recent It)

The premise is this: on a bright late summer morning, Shawshank Penitentiary's very recently retired warden Dale Lacey (Terry O'Quinn) commits suicide. Upon hearing that he had kept an entire cell block empty for decades, his successor Theresa Porter (Ann Cusack) sends two prison guards to investigate the area; there they find, in an underground cell, a young man in a cage. When asked to identify himself, he says the name Henry Matthew Deaver. The problem is, he is most decidedly not Henry Deaver, and the guards who grew up in Castle Rock know this instantly.

One of those guards, Dennis Zalewski (Noel Fisher), calls the real Henry (Andre Holland) anonymously and tells him he is being asked for in his hometown. Henry is currently a lawyer for death row inmates in Texas; we see him eloquently (but ultimately fruitlessly) arguing to a jury for the commutation of the death sentence of a woman who killed her husband. He reluctantly makes the trip up to Maine to discover the purpose of the anonymous call, and on a more personal note, to visit his mother Ruth (Sissy Spacek), currently suffering from dementia.

(thar be spoilers ahead)

"Cat Person," Aziz Ansari, and the end of love.

In December 2017 a short story published in The New Yorker titled "Cat Person" caused a stir as it depicted the awkward, ugly realities of modern dating; it caught more notice, perhaps, because of the attention lavished on it by people (largely young women) who claimed it was a page ripped directly from their own lives.

My interaction with the hubbub was mainly through Instagram, as my cousin tagged me in The New Yorker's post and I read the thousands of too-similar comments exclaiming some version of "this is soooo true!!!" My cousin tagged me because it resonated strongly for her, and she knew that it would for me as well. I proceeded to read it, and it did.

"Cat Person" details one college student's misadventures in trying to get to know a patron of her movie theater where she sold him snacks. Because he was mildly more talkative than most boys her age, they managed to swap numbers and then for a few weeks engaged in dopamine-triggering text exchanges full of witty banter. But when it came time to be fully human - to go on a date, to fool around - everything changed. The guy who was so confident and funny via smartphone screen turned out to be just another socially-challenged disappointment who'd learned all he knew about sex from porn, and who claimed to have a bunch of cats she never actually saw.

In a weird trick of timing, several weeks after the fervor over "Cat Person," an article was published in Babe magazine detailing a young woman's abysmal date with comedian Aziz Ansari. There was even less to their connection than the ill-fated duo of the short story, as she and Ansari hardly knew each other, and the "date" quickly devolved into an almost shockingly comical imitation of shockingly bad porn. The hubbub surrounding this article, which was printed less than a week after Ansari won a Golden Globe for acting, involved a wide range of social factors: the #metoo movement, feminism in general, the racial implications that it was a hit piece (considering his incredibly recent accomplishment), the state of sexuality among Millennials, the increasingly embedded effects of a porn-saturated society.

Both of these events, and many, many more before them, have forced us to begin trying to figure out how sex, love, and companionship have become so very difficult and distant in a time when we should be reaping the multiple rewards of a sexual revolution now fifty years in our past. This is simply my perspective.

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