It was constantly that cross between adrenaline and fear. And I still live there. Marcus describes how his band keyboardist Ben Lovett, bass player Ted Dwane, and banjo player Winston Marshall found their sound. Staying together for more than a decade is not easy for a band. Marcus describes it as a marriage. This article includes content provided by Spotify.
We ask for your permission before anything is loaded, as they may be using cookies and other technologies. To view this content, click 'Allow and continue'. They're inauthentic, runs the general complaint.
They went to fee-paying London schools and now they're all about heels and waistcoats and hoedowns. Like I am. Like we all are," says Marshall. There is a plausible argument that this band are the most successful in the world right now — Babel shifted , copies in its first week in the US , making it the fastest-seller of the year.
The album before that, 's Sigh No More, went multiple platinum. And here they are, commendably you might say perversely taking a share of the blame for the stick they get, on national-character grounds. But he points to the example of legendary British guitarist Peter Green. Nothing fucking authentic about that, right? But actually there is.
He loves it. It's what he's good at. It's not like he's saying he's from the Delta. It's not like we're saying anything like that. He changed his name. And modelled himself on Woody Guthrie. And lied to everyone about who he was. Mumford is outfitted today like his hero, the worn dark suit ideally Dylan, so too the black hat deep-positioned on his head. Backstage at the Hollywood Bowl this hat will get a compliment from a bystander and Mumford will explain that its appearance is the result of many weeks campaigning.
His wife, the actor Carey Mulligan , took some persuading on it Mumford and Mulligan married in April, and she is here at the venue today, merrily flitting about the wings, wearing a jumper with a large letter M on it. Mumford is wary about his private life, and prefers not to speak on the record about Mulligan.
I relate the following story as to how the couple got together from other reports. Still whatever the product, people were buying in droves. The band hit upon a formula of rising crescendos and repeated it over and over and over again. The group perfected the formula: Sometimes the music gets loud!!!!! Then shhhh, it gets real quiet again. And, wait for it , it gets LOUD! This was real music with real instruments , bro.
To the extent they were the rebelling forces, the rebellion worked. Ultimately, the predictability of Mumford was irksome. This is the part where I begrudgingly admit that the Mumford product sometimes works for me. Sure, the songs are vague and sweeping, in the grand tradition of U2 or Coldplay, obviously intent on stadium ambitions, but that in itself is not a crime.
Less than two weeks after we meet, the band commit to a new single - Guiding Light, which premiered on Annie Mac's Radio 1 show on Thursday night. It's classic Mumford - full of searching harmonies, stridently strummed guitars and a floorboard-threatening crescendo. Like many of the new songs, it offers solace in a crisis, with repeated imagery of a transition from darkness into light.
Mumford doesn't address it directly, but it's likely he's referencing the Grenfell disaster, which claimed 72 lives last June. He witnessed the tower block being consumed by flames from the window of his London flat and immediately committed himself to the relief effort. The singer spent weeks with survivors and their families, listening to their stories and lobbying MPs to correct what he called the "shambolic" response. He's since established a free summer football programme for the young children of Grenfell, and continues to support the community.
The rest of the band have also been touched by what one song describes as "the world and its curse" in the last year. A sense of maturity pervades the new music, too, as the band incorporate new sounds and textures without the reactionary "bin the banjos" mentality of their previous record, Wilder Mind.
Marshall may have "fallen in love" with Guiding Light the first time he heard it - but Mumford struggled for months to wrestle the song into shape. So there's a kind of disco groove underneath the chorus - and trying to pair that with a banjo was a nightmare. That even includes their biggest hit, the Grammy-nominated I Will Wait. I can't do it again! I think we rise to conflict… to a bit of a challenge.
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