New sound makes an awkward hybrid

Mumford and Sons, Motorpoint Arena, Cardiff

DEATH and taxes are meant to be the only two universal certainties.

How long before we can add in the ubiquitous light of a smartphone held at arm’s length for either a selfie or an ‘I was there’ moment where, frankly, you might as well not have been there as you were watching it through your screen?

At music venues it turns just about every gig into little more than a homogenous, sanitised, Instagramfriendly chatshow appearance.

Toss in a samey-sounding set and a few platitudes and you’ve got a nice, paint-by-numbers gig that barrels along, peaks at points, and sends an audience off feeling happy that ‘they were there’.

Mumford and Sons are an incredibly polished outfit and crowd satisfaction is, by and large, almost guaranteed. In Yet this slight change in musical trying to break out of the twee, country trajectory has left them with a bit of a bumpkin bracket they seemed to get hybrid identity. It’s still familiar hits like lumped into, they’ve got a little grittier, The Cave and Little Lion Man which feel with hammering drums and moody bass most natural, even if they’re almost lines in new album opener Snake Eyes. drowned out by the collective braying of

“We’re determined to have a party,” a crowd who sound like a pub-drunk Marcus Mumford promises diligently, singing Sinatra songs while falling down ahead of a rhythmic, jangly I Will Wait the stairs backwards. that has the crowd air-punching in Marcus Mumford, by contrast, some hypnotic reverie. how manages to maintain his delicate

A mellow country vibe creeps in and rich vocal harmonies during a quick before 2012 single Lover of the Light, crowd tour during Ditmas. with its skittering drums and soaring They’re back on the main stage for the strings taking things up a notch. confetti cannons to go off – cliché

Thistle and Weeds rumbles away complete – during closer The Wolf. intensely, with a burning crimson light All very nice here but almost as show, before Believe swoops in to predictable as death, taxes and showcase the newer electric sound. smartphones. The winning numbers in Saturday night’s Lotto main draw were

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