Mumford & Sons, the call of the mainstream - Rolling Stone
With Delta, their new album, former folk group Mumford & Sons consolidates his career and now establishes himself as a heavyweight at U2. At the cost of questionable compromises…
Welcome to the museum of the language of wood, advertising phrases and marketing formulas: “innovation”, “radical change”, “new”, “exciting”. Marcus Mumford, vocalist, drummer and figurehead for Mumford & Sounds, dispenses with this kind of platitudes with an irritating conviction. "Right now, we're at our best, we feel like we're reaching our zenith of creativity," he says of Delta, the band's latest album. And to add quickly: “Which does not mean that we are the best group in the world.”
The media machine, launched a few months ago, is comparable to that of large multinationals such as U2 or Coldplay. Rule n° 1, to fill the time between the end of the production of the album and its release: the more one doubts the quality of the work, the more one must extend into anecdotes. Besides evaluating one's own performance (“creative zenith”), why not bring up nonsense, like producer Paul Epworth's mixing “technique”? Half of his studio console would have been used to record The Dark Side of the Moon and the other half, Some Girls – as if the echo of these monuments would resurface on Delta! Another example is Mumford's pride when he recounts how they tweaked the sound of a banjo to the point that it was no longer recognizable. “We wondered why not surpass ourselves by trying to integrate the banjo as the main instrument, so that it sounds like no one has ever heard it!” he enthuses again.
In 2015, Mumford & Sons had already abandoned the banjo which had dominated the first two albums. Wilder Mind marked the transition to rock, stadium style. But, in the perfecto and electric guitar genre against a backdrop of seventies clichés, the Kings of Leon had already set the bar very high. Despite good sales, the album quickly fell into oblivion. However, for Mumford, Wilder Mind was a necessary step: "We realized that from there, we could go wherever we wanted."
Sigh No More, which marked their debut in 2009, nevertheless sounded like a revival of handmade folk. But the incredible popularity of which Mumford & Sons enjoyed then led directly to a Babel (2012) imbued with a hymnic pathos that was nothing more than attitude. Emphatic screams, hubbub of melodies and stomps accompanied by mind-boggling fingerpicking… The charm of a track like “I Will Wait” could not be reproduced endlessly. “We were afraid of getting stuck there,” Mumford explains. After two acoustic albums, it would have been unnatural to continue like this. Surrounding ourselves with such a stylistic corset no longer corresponded to our tastes, which are much broader.
Mumford & Sons had met Epworth long before Wilder Mind, but the director's schedule was already filled with celebrity clients, such as U2, Coldplay and Adele. “We had sent him a bunch of demos. They were pretty bad, it's surprising that he accepted! Mumford recalls wryly. Today they would be the best of friends, and the memories of the sessions at Church Studios in Epworth, north London, are nothing but praise: “I could talk about it for days. Working with him was one of the best experiences I have ever had. He has become a brother to us.” In his church converted into a studio, Brother Epworth would also have been quite demanding with the group. Silence level, first, because there is no separation between the control room and the musicians. Then a workload that made an impression. “He never seems to run out of creative energy. He was already there when we arrived in the morning and he was still there after we left.”
Rule n° 2 to meet the requirements of the promotion: talk about “musical experiments” by practicing a well-balanced and targeted name drop. The less likely an influence seems, the better. Thus, during the sessions, they would have listened to Kanye West, Talk Talk and Charles Mingus. “All these preferences that we have to bring together are not always easy. Ted, for example, likes reggae, I don't really,” Mumford says of his disagreements with bassist Ted Dwane.
Indeed, Delta delivers the same little stylistic fusions – an EDM groove here, a hip-hop texture there – that will prank any production wanting even a modicum of count. in the mainstream segment. And, to achieve this, Epworth managed to eliminate every last shred of indie charm that remained from the four Londoners. And here is a Delta “right” in the format of radio globalization standards: bombastic missiles of pseudo-emotions that miss the heart but pulverize the mind. Flawless technological fetishism, overload of “Wembleyesque” effects, orgies of guitar reverb and epic Hollywood orchestrations. But success proves them right...
At least we can't blame Mumford & Sounds of being back on familiar ground after Wilder Mind's electric "experimentation", as Delta is in no way a throwback to the rather stripped-down folk of their first two albums. On the contrary, they took the opportunity to further cement their career and are now one of the few bands that have found success with handmade music. We will probably never know if the qualitative compromises to stay in tune with the times were voluntary or only due to the veto of their management since, from a certain level of success, just like the big brands or the governments, the artists maintain an ironclad politically correct facade. Despite everything, Marcus Mumford, Marshall Winston, Ben Lovett and Ted Dwane give the impression of having retained a little personal authenticity, at least in their texts. Because things happened in their lives of just thirty years old. At least one of the four big D's (death, drugs, depression, divorce) would have affected each of them, according to the Lovett keyboard. Directly or through other more or less close people? The answer remains modestly discreet. Just this hint from Mumford: "In three or four years, in an adult's life, you can go through a lot of shit."
Many of these experiences would therefore have found their way into the texts. For example, Mumford's happy marriage to actress Carey Mulligan, whom he married shortly after they collaborated on the Coen brothers' film Inside Llewyn Davis - two children so far. Or his participation in the tribute for Dylan, Lost On the River: The New Basement Tapes. Or his charitable commitment for the survivors of the Grenfell Tower in London, devastated by fire on June 14, 2017. Mumford was even able to visit a refugee camp near Mosul, Iraq. Hoping to be able to help people, if only by listening to them. “There are stories that need to be heard. It bothers me that so many people are not being heard these days…”
Certainly. On the other hand, when we read that Mumford & Sons invited the somewhat rustic Canadian psychologist and critic Jordan Peterson into the studio (we are talking about a man who regularly warns against the “terrorism of Marxism” and who, after the Toronto truck attack in April 2018, had said to “understand” a killer “angry with God because women rejected him”), there, the image of Marcus Mumford who wants to give back the voice to the weak and to the excluded of our society cracks. The humanist commitment of a Mumford and the anti-politically correct aggressiveness of a Peterson, it does not fit. “Guiding Light” is the title of the first single from Delta. Could it be the light of the train coming from the other side of the tunnel?
Max GöscheTranslation and adaptation: Peter Kröner
