Mumford & Sons

Since 2009’s Sigh No More rampaged across the globe – and with ‘Little Lion Man’ doing particularly well in Australia, winning the number one spot on triple j’s Hottest 100 by the largest victory margin in the chart’s history – the band has soared from strength to strength. This year saw the release of Wilder Mind, which heralded a significant shift in the band’s development. Chatting with Winston Marshall on a cold early morning reveals some surprising insight.

“Pfft. Your cold is like the height of our summer, so I’m really not sympathising with you at all right now,” he says. “Your coldest days are up there with our warmest. Like, what temperature are you hitting?”

“It’s like 16, 17 degrees,” I hazard.

“Fuck you! Literally, fuck you! Man, that’s amazing!”

Marshall is calling from New York, where he has been recovering his energies after a string of performances and an endless cavalcade of media jerks insisting on his time. Despite myself now adding to that chorus, he is in remarkably cheerful spirits.

“We’ve got two months off now after we hit it pretty hard this summer. We played Leeds [Festival], which is where all of the teenagers in Britain go to. Playing that was just amazing. Playing to kids is the best fucking audience you can play to. They don’t give a fuck, they have so much energy and they just give everything. Mixed crowds are great, but playing to kids is something else. They’ve drunk a shitload of beer, they don’t realise that it’s watered down, and they just go wild. I think they were two of the best gigs that we’ve ever had. Ever. So now, a couple of months off now, and then we’re starting things up again in Australia.”

That time has now come, with the Mumford circus to roll into town for their Gentlemen Of The Road extravaganza in The Domain, joined by guests including Jake Bugg, Future Islands, The Vaccines and more. The headliners have long established the trick to making a show memorable.

“The pinnacle of the day is always going to be the gig, so you’re mostly saving your energy,” Marshall explains. “You don’t want to blow out, because those two hours onstage have to be fucking incredible. We have that mentality where everything that happens during the day is leading up to being onstage. When we’re off tour, it relaxes. We’re all pretty knackered and it’ll take us a week or so to readjust. Right now we’ve started thinking about the next album, getting new songs together. We’re all based in slightly different places, so we all demo up by ourselves and then email each other ideas. That’s where we are now, really, emailing around ideas of what the next one is going to be.”

Given that Wilder Mind was released just six months ago, it’s impressive to learn the guys are already kicking around ideas for what the next chapter in their sound will be. Their much-discussed shift away from folk instruments and into the electric sphere has seen Mumford & Sons return to their musical roots, although it is an aspect of their sound audiences are arguably less familiar with. It is also one which continues to creep into Marshall’s latest writing.

“The first demos that I’ve done for the new record sound like Wilder Mind, in the same sense that the first demos from the last album [Babel] sounded a bit like the one before. You have to push yourself to do different things, and I think we’re really good at challenging each other in that sense.

“Marcus [Mumford] just sent through a demo, and it’s like nothing I’ve heard him write before; it’s just fucking awesome. He’s always good at that, way better than I am. We challenge each other, and because we all grew up together, we won’t let anyone get away with too much. We won’t appease each other. The challenge within us is quite good, but also pretty heartbreaking. No-one likes to see a song pushed down.”

With such massive levels of success, you do wonder at just how voracious the Mumford & Sons creature is; how close you can come to losing yourself in a vehicle so popular. In other words, how deep can Marshall submerge before losing sense of who he is?

“That’s a real problem, and I think that’s why so many bands end up fighting with each other. Before we took our break, we’d had six or seven years of being in that one place, and we were desperate, desperate to do other things. I’m not even a banjo player. Guitar is my instrument, and so after doing so much banjo I just wanted to break out. That stuff is definitely very frustrating. I think we all worked really hard, and the sacrifices of doing one particular thing to fulfil a role within the band has served us well, and now we can contemplate all doing different things. We’re much happier.

“We were fucking teenagers when we started the band, dressing up like fucking Muppets in dungarees. As you got older, you’re not wearing the same kind of clothes you were when you were 14. It’s natural. It’s very frustrating to feel caged, or stuck in any one role. I just love my job and love touring so much, but I’m so glad we took that break. No-one is ever just one thing.”