The Mumlers: Forward to the Past

Nobody makes music that sounds quite like The Mumlers - not in this century,

The Mumlers at The Heirloom Arts Theatre anyway. The San Jose, California six-piece band has a style that strings together disparate elements of Americana without dumbing them down. Their new album, Don't Throw Me Away, is an odd amalgamation of doo-wop, swing, bayou blues, folk, and lo-fi Indie songwriting.

From the New Orleans swagger of album-opener, "Raise The Blinds." to the soulful plea of the title track, The Mumlers are a group that refuses to settle down into any one genre. It can be a lot to take in at once- the band shifts gears so often that it threatens to leave the listener exhausted- yet they pull it off with enough grace and enthusiasm to compel you to come along for the strange ride. Clocking in at just over 40 minutes, Don't Throw Me Away invites and rewards repeat listens.

The Mumlers' greatest achievement might be that they manage to reproduce- maybe even exceed- the sound and energy of their studio recordings in a live setting. I was lucky enough to catch them when they came through Danbury on a month-long U.S. tour to play at the Heirloom Arts Theatre. The band was tight and their vocal harmonies were pristine.

The other quality that stood out immediately was the multi-instrumentalism and overall talent displayed by the band. Felix Archuleta jumped with apparent ease between playing euphonium, organ, lead guitar, backup vocalist and devil-mask-wearing dual-tambourine wielding maniac. This musical ambidextrousness abounded, with around ten instruments divided between the six players, including trumpet, trombone, French horn and tenor sax.

Lead singer and guitarist Will Sprott has an expressed love for 60s pop, and the influence of that decade's music comes through in many of The Mumlers songs. The album-closing title track, "Don't Throw Me Away," is in particular a brilliant genre exercise, presenting a novel variation on the type of R&B song that came to be associated with the close-dancing high school proms of the 1950s. At nearly six minutes long, it is also the album's lengthiest number, languidly expanding and contracting through that mournful and familiar four-chord guitar progression, pacifying the listener before arriving at a stunningly heartfelt climax, with choral harmonies boosting up Sprott's appeal to an unnamed love: "Won't you change your mind?"

"Golden Arm & Black Hand," in contrast, is a sort of countrified waltz, adorned with a lazily sliding lead guitar and a dreamy feel. This is directly followed by "Fugitive & Vagabond," a lively sing-along with the catchiest whistling part this side of a Gene Kelly musical. This track somehow turns into a ragtime march with tinkling barroom piano, sliding trombone, and crashing cymbals.

How The Mumlers manage to pull off all these changes in tone is beyond me, but the cohesion is undeniable and it is part of what makes this album so great. Elsewhere, on "St. James St.," The Mumlers dig farther back in the canon of American popular music. The allusion to the swing era hit "St. James Infirmary" becomes apparent with the line "I went down to Saint James Street/to buy a bottle of beer," sung to the accompaniment of clarinet, organ, and a muted trumpet.

What's clear is that while The Mumlers' sound can be reminiscent of the music of some bygone era, it has an immediacy that makes it relevant. "99 Years Ago" may or may not be a love letter to the grimy lounge jazz that Tom Waits perfected in the 70s; it is more importantly a (possibly metaphoric) love letter to Sprott's grandmother, and The Mumlers own it, flashy organ solo and all.

Even more than the other cuts on the album, this song demonstrates that regardless of the band's influences, the music stands on its own. In an era of winking irony, The Mumlers have the audacity to be unabashedly sincere in their embrace of the past. That The Mumlers make the virtues of sincerity and authenticity seem edgy is perhaps more of a damning commentary on the nihilistic state of pop culture than a compliment to the band, but it's refreshing anyway to listen to a group so clearly in love with music in all its strange forms.

Also featured online at TheMercurial. com. Visit TheMercurial.com for more photos and video footage of The Mumlers.