Mumford & Sons, “Sigh No More” (Glass Note)

How explosive is this British banjo rager of a record? It’s so potent that old folkies are learning to use iTunes for the first time — and they’re not alone. “Sigh No More” just unseated Susan Boyle’s “I Dreamed a Dream” as the No. 1 record in Australia, and the positive reviews in the States and U.K. are pouring in.

Count this among those. I saw Mumford & Sons twice at the South by Southwest music festival last year, and they presented that rare mixture of raw emotion, expert musicianship and compelling songs masterfully. The Avett Brothers comparisons are easy, especially with this band’s love of ballads.

But this group has a darker bent, reveling in apocalyptic sounds and dramatic wordsmithing. On “Dust Bowl Blues,” the piano and banjo duel to the death. “White Blank Page” is a beautifully bitter track that thrives on chamber pop flourishes. And “The Cave,” a song that has been the band’s signature track for more than a year, is an undeniable jam that would fit as solidly on KBCO as it would on the stages of the Telluride Bluegrass Festival, where Mumford & Sons will make their Colorado debut this summer. – Ricardo Baca

Massive Attack, “Heligoland” (Virgin)

Massive Attack may not sound all that revolutionary these days, but when the band first broke out of Bristol, England, in 1991, the music pioneers were at the forefront of the new genre called trip-hop. Nearly 20 years on, the group — now essentially a duo with rotating guest vocalists — is suffering the fate of many of its peers, which is that the bands influenced by Massive Attack (from rock to electronic) are producing more interesting work than the band itself.

“Heligoland,” Massive’s fifth studio album, is ambitious. It ropes in vocalists from the arty dance-rock (TV on the Radio’s Tunde Adebimpe) and pop fields (Damon Albarn of Gorillaz and Blur) to more sultry styles (longtime collaborator Martina Topley-Bird). It’s a dense album, packed with production tricks and details that appear only through close, repeated listens.

But the overall effect is mild and sleepy, and save for a couple of quiet stunners (“Paradise Circus,” “Saturday Come Slow”) it fails to offer anything smacking of inventiveness — which is a shame, since originality used to be this group’s strong suit. – John Wenzel

Midlake, “The Courage of Others” (Bella Union)

Midlake reaches past the 1970s soft-rock of its excellent 2006 disc “The Trials of Van Occupanther” to ostensibly plunder the late ‘60s British folk revivalism, and while it’s not exactly original, it’s also easily one of 2010’s most bracing, quietly brilliant releases.

The darkness that pervades “The Courage of Others” isn’t of the sensationalist, fake-blood kind, but it’s downright alarming how suicidal these Denton, Texas lads sound. A primitive fear/awe of nature informs the lyrics, which distill longing and loss as effectively as Elliott Smith’s best work. Lots of acoustic hammer-ons and quasi-Elizabethan chord structures add a musty, stately air to the proceedings. Mostly it’s Tim Smith’s restrained vocals and the crisp, perfectly dialed-in arrangements that make this a melancholy masterpiece practically on par with Smith’s “Either/Or” or Nick Drake’s “Pink Moon.”

It may come off as a bit deliberate and same-y to those without the gloomy palate and fondness for minor keys, but it’s also got the smack of timelessness – particularly the devastating, subtly epic “Rulers, Ruling All Things.” You have to wonder what happened to the band for it to head in such a bleak (albeit gorgeously so) direction. Did one of their members’ family die in a tragic accident? Is one of them terminally ill? Likely it’s just some shadowy artistic muse guiding them down this path, which seemingly takes them by the smoldering ruins of a remote village in the gray winter sleet. Talk about a requiem. – John Wenzel

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Ricardo Baca is the founder and co-editor of Reverb and an award-winning critic and journalist at The Denver Post. He is also the executive director of the Underground Music Showcase, Colorado’s premier indie music festival. Follow his whimsies at Twitter, his live music habit at Gigbot and his iTunes addictions at Last.fm.

John Wenzel is the co-editor of Reverb, editor of the Get Real Denver blog and an A&E reporter for The Denver Post. His book “Mock Stars: Indie Comedy and the Dangerously Funny” was recently published by Speck Press. He also maintains a Twitter feed of random song titles.