SOUND OUT R We make the music we want to make

IDING high after finishing their fourth album and halfway through recording their fifth, Mumford & Sons are at a crossroads. Looking back, the folk rockers recognise a time they were restricted by the music that made them famous. Looking forward, they see a 60-date world tour and a new-found creative freedom.

“We are in a particularly fertile, creative time,” the band’s banjoist and lead guitarist Winston Marshall says while sitting at a worn wooden table, tucked away upstairs at a bar in south London.

A few hundred people sit, eat and drink below in Flat Iron Square, a space that has become a cultural hub for the four-piece.

Over the course of an hour, members of the band traipse in and out of the room. Winston is contemplative and whimsical, while singer and multiinstrumentalist Ben Lovett sits behind sunglasses as he shares the story of how he came to own Omeara, the venue he opened in one of the seven railway arches dominating Flat Iron Square.

Then comes Marcus Mumford, namesake and de facto leader of the group, and, after him, bassist Ted Dwane. Both seem clear-minded, presumably focused by the completion of their fourth studio album, Delta.

Recorded with super producer and “mad genius” Paul Epworth (Adele, Rihanna, Florence And The Machine) in London’s Church Studios, the album sees the group settle into their new identity as post-Americana troubadours.

After two albums of banjoforward rabble-rousing songs and one of unobjectionable indie rock, the group’s latest effort sees them embrace a wider range of sounds.

Their most recent effort was influenced by the idea of “selfserving” modern love, the power of nature and, most poignantly, the spectre of death.

“I’ve felt much closer to death over the last couple of years,” Marcus says as he puffs intermittently on an e-cigarette. “Partly personally, my family, but also with some trips with the charity War Child, who I am an ambassador for.”

After returning from a trip to Mosul, a city in northern Iraq liberated from IS in late 2016, Marcus looked out the window of his west London home to see Grenfell Tower burning.

“Like most of the community who live in that part of the city, I went down and stayed involved. That’s really, properly changed my life,” he declares.

“I’ve been listening lots and I’m starting to do a bit more. It’s been very affecting.”

Since then, Marcus has remained involved, helping the survivors of the fire that claimed 72 lives. He raised money through charity football matches and continues to work with Grenfell United, a group supporting survivors and grieving families. Nearly 10 years after they shot to fame with Sigh No More, Mumford & Sons remain a fixture on the global touring circuit. The four-piece speak to about love, death and that divisive third album

Delta was also influenced by the collaborating more freely. Instead of But on Delta the band have birth of Marcus’s second child with the usual set-up – one frontman, dusted off the banjos, the source of his wife, actress Carey Mulligan, a guitarist, bass player and drummer both their success and also some marriage that has attracted the – Mumford & Sons rotate their roles. ridicule by parts of the press. lion’s share of media attention The group are less of a band and Now, they are using the around the band. “more of a collaboration between instrument in subtler ways. Delta is

“The stakes get higher. I think it four songwriters than it is like a a complex, multi-layered affair that probably expands your capacity for normal band dynamic”, Ben could only have been made in the empathy,” he says of his child’s birth explains. wake of Wilder Mind. last year. This may be one of the reasons But the group have no regrets,

“Especially seeing they are so happy to poke denying that their third record even other people’s fun at their choice of divided their fan base. children in really hard name, which portrays the Marcus suggests it was only the situations.” group as a one-man press who had been surprised by

Asked about the band. In the past they’ve their change of direction. effect of the band’s called it “rubbish”. “The more we played it, the more gruelling tour “The name is for sure a people have understood it. I think schedule on his family misnomer but it feels like you are always a couple of years life, Marcus remains it’s us now,” Ben clarifies. ahead of your audience,” he pragmatic. “We kind of just got used maintains.

“It’s no more to it.” “I don’t think people should have difficult than any Three years ago, been so surprised and I don’t think other job,” he insists. “I Mumford & Sons released our audience were. It was more the don’t think we have any Wilder Mind, where they press.” complaints in that sense. It looks eschewed the folk sound to which As the conversation draws to a different because we are away for they owe their success. close, Ben says: “We just make the longer chunks than if we had Instead, they recorded an album music we want to make. We did that nine-to-five jobs in London,” he of what many critics considered with Babel, and Wilder Mind, and adds. mild-mannered indie rock. that’s what we are doing now,” he

“But I think being away from The reception was lukewarm and declares. family is something you have to do sometimes scathing, and Wilder “It’s not so binary, where we are when you work.” Mind sold only 500,000 copies – one moving towards or away from one This album also million less than their charts-slaying thing. To us it feels much more

sees the group debut Sigh No More. three-dimensional.” PHOENIX is a fitting name for an album that might never have happened in the wake of very public spat with ex-boyfriend Calvin Harris and a long-running feud with her former label, Jay-Z’s own Roc Nation.

Given that Ora has had six years to write and refine Phoenix, the 28-year-old’s highly anticipated second LP is a serviceable collection of pop songs, but it lacks real kick.

First Time High marries glossy production with a feel-good dancehall swing while Summer Love, featuring the worldconquering Rudimental, is a decent crack at a drum and bass anthem.

There are no bad songs and there’s certainly enjoyment to be had – but was it worth the wait?