New album “Prizefighter” from “Mumford & Sons”: “Let your anger go to hell”

Finally, after almost 20 years of career, the great folk pop band Mumford & Sons made a song that captures their essence in the title. “The Banjo Song” is the name of the third piece on their new album, without further ado. And yes, it is exactly this string instrument that actually makes you think of cowboys or cheerful chases on the prairie, which has always been a sonic watermark of the group. She comes from the west of London and became world famous with her farm boy look.

Their platinum-selling hits from the 2010s plinked and plonked in a way that only one could. Mumford & Sons won the Grammy in 2013 for a record called “Babel,” which made every banjo man hyperventilate even after a cursory listen. How the “Banjo Song” got its title 13 years later is unclear. Here, of all places, the four strings are not plucked in the typical western and bluegrass pattern, but rather just gently strummed. A bus stop ballad that starts off sparse and then dims up to Madison Square Garden dimensions. “Hey, did you call, did you fall, do you need someone?” sings bandleader Marcus Mumford in dramatic introspection, probably with his eyes narrowed. It’s about empathy or something like that.

Why did they call the piece “The Banjo Song”? Mumford laughs. At first it had a different title, he says. But he couldn’t possibly betray him. Probably a risky inside joke.

The encounter takes place in a backstage room in Berlin’s large concert hall, which – to the delight of Kreuzberg taxi drivers – has recently been called the Uber Arena. Mumford, 39, a Californian who grew up in England, came all in designer black, wearing sunglasses, a gold chain, white socks and dark loafers. He doesn’t seem at all like the rhythm-stomping folk singer you think you know him as. Or just like a folk singer who does everything possible just to not look like a folk singer.

The memory of the years of great success feels “dizzy” for him, says Mumford. “And a little dusty.” Whatever he means by that, whether it’s a flirtatious cocaine reference or not, the past ten years haven’t been the best for Mumford & Sons. Sales figures fell particularly in the USA. The breaks became longer, the awards and major festival appearances dried up. So strong that today one wonders who still listens to this band, which was once one of the heroes of the neo-folk boom.

Marcus Mumford blocks it: “We have said everything there is to say on the subject.”

And then on the evening in question in Berlin you see Mumford & Sons being celebrated by around 17,000 people with a furor that you rarely experience live. Apparently another cultural sleeper phenomenon, a spring festival of folk music in the middle of winter. And despite all the mockery of the pleasantness and the clear-lacquered country house flair, you have to admit that there are a lot of great songs to hear.

“Conversation With My Son (Gangsters & Angels)”, for example, which is only being released on the new album “Prizefighter” these days, but is already being tested on a live audience on the Berlin evening. “The little ones’ questions keep you awake at night,” Marcus Mumford ponders over the acoustic guitar; he himself has three children with the actress Carey Mulligan. Reflects on the sad world, the dagger at the throat, the machinery of civilization and the spiritual hope at its core. “We’re all just acrobats and beggars,” he tells his son in the song. A pathetic but valid answer to the question of what world we are just beginning to leave behind for the children here.

Mumford & Sons never behaved as rebels and social awakening personnel, even though they stand in the tradition of rebellious music. Politics affected them in a completely different way: in 2021, founding member Winston Marshall tweeted praise to the ultra-right influencer Andy Ngo. Rowed back when the fan community was angry about it. And shortly afterwards announced his separation from the band. Reason: He wanted to live out his convictions without having to take Mumford’s career into account. He has now become a right-wing commentator himself. Occasionally appears on Fox News and is a popular guest in Trump spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt’s question times.

By the way, Marshall was the banjo player who plucked the famous patterns back then. Those left behind at Mumford & Sons did not replace him. Today, the banjo is played by a guest musician during performances.

“If you have to talk, can you do it graciously?”

“We have said everything there is to say on the subject,” says Marcus Mumford as soon as you want to talk to him about the matter. But can the new Mumford album – in the light of all the events – also be understood as a position paper? In which, as in the father-son song, they make more concrete reference to the passage of time for the first time? “Everyone is constantly looking for places where they feel safe and belong,” says Mumford. “We have always tried to offer such a space with our music. We realize how privileged we are to be able to do that. In many places in the world it is currently extremely dangerous to express oneself freely.”

He doesn’t want to sharpen the theses, and at first you’re very annoyed that Mumford wants to rush through with a statement that doesn’t hurt anyone. Until you start to think about whether there isn’t a small, not so self-evident truth in all the wishy-washy stuff that at least fits in every pocket. And what a hot-tempered man like the departed Winston Marshall would do with a piece like “Where It Belongs,” which the band plays in concert on the small no-bullshit session stage that stands in the middle of the auditorium. “If you have to talk, can you do it in a friendly way?” they sing in several voices. “Let your anger go to hell, because that’s where it belongs.”

They are good words. Mumford & Sons were never the greatest poets and thinkers. Considering that, they’re still not doing badly.