Mumford & Sons have achieved massive success, but they’re still desperate for respect. They’ve drawn from classic literature, sung with Bob Dylan, and reinvented their sound multiple times, and none of it seems to matter; as an old viral video once revealed, they will always be the band that sang the word “heart” 65 times in two albums. But on their third, 2015’s rock pivot Wilder Mind, they somehow wound up ahead of their time: They worked with producer James Ford years before Geese and gave Aaron Dessner his biggest credit up to that point as their associate producer. Critics and audiences alike were baffled, but it offered a new prototype for getting brooding, atmospheric songs onto rock radio, even if Ford recently admitted he regrets the gig.
After 2018’s messy Delta, the departure of banjoist-turned-alt-right-commentator Winston Marshall, and 2022’s surprisingly raw solo album from Marcus Mumford, the now-trio went tail between their legs to their old sound on last year’s Dave Cobb-helmed Rushmere. In the meantime, the genre Mumford & Sons helped popularize found a new life: Offspring with names like the Oh Hellos and the Crane Wives tour to rabid fanbases, millions of listeners, and little critical attention. Whatever the band’s reception at the time, zillennials look nostalgically on Sigh No More the way their older siblings did the early Coldplay albums; maybe Sigh led listeners to more sophisticated folk and bluegrass, or at least a cursory viewing of O Brother, Where Art Thou. With the mainstream reemergence of stomp-clap-heys from acts like Noah Kahan, they’re now elder statesmen. A reunion with Dessner was inevitable, so off they went to his Long Pond Studio for 10 days. There’s no better time for an album that shows why they’ve outlasted most of their contemporaries.
No score yet, be the first to add.
That album is not Prizefighter. The opening run of tracks is everything that critics have thrown at them from the beginning. Co-writes from Brandi Carlile and vocals from Chris Stapleton can’t save it; the choruses can’t muster up the old dopamine hits; even the trademark Dessner doohickeys seem absent, just uninspired arrangements with heavily Melodyned vocals. You might read the title of “The Banjo Song” and wonder how they don’t already have a song called that, except they actually do have one called “The Banjolin Song,” from their days opening for Johnny Flynn and Laura Marling. Mumford, in an attempt at humility, metaphorically doxxes himself on opener “Here”: “Here’s my credit card and keys/And the reasons I won’t find peace,” then “Here’s my address and the ones I blame.” It’s shocking when he doesn’t go, “Here’s the church, here’s the steeple…”
On “Alleycat,” Mumford looks down and asks, “Is this all there is?” At that exact moment, the album shifts gears, exchanging feigned authenticity for an honest search for meaning. They’ve struggled with faith on songs like Babel’s “Below My Feet” and Rushmere’s “Carry On,” and Mumford is particularly thoughtful about this subject in interviews. This album’s “Begin Again” stands out for its direct allusions to Mumford’s father, who led the UK branch of evangelical association Vineyard Churches: “Don’t carry your father’s sins more than you can take/I swear there’s another way,” he belts atop an unusually muscular version of a bog-standard Mumford song; the formula works when there are actual stakes!
