Gilt-edged Babel
MARCUS Mumford says his band, Mumford and Sons, have been embraced so enthusiastically in America “because everyone out there thinks we’re Irish. You go out there and you discover that Americans fucking love the Irish — loooove them.”
The privately educated Londoner sounds incredulous. Mumford remains more than a little astonished at his “little group’s” success. When Mumford and Sons released their debut, Sigh No More, in late 2009, it seemed laughably improbable they would become a five-million record-selling stadium outfit.
The four upper-middle class friends from west London looked like they’d sauntered out of an ad campaign for an upmarket Scottish whiskey.
Their posh wellies and designer waist-coats spoke of weekends zipping around the English home counties in a Range Rover; the scraggy beards and gentleman’s moustaches were the sort of hipster accoutrements the media loved to mock.
Musically, it was equally improbable. Earnest and earthy, Mumford and Sons sought an unfashionable common ground between U2 and The Waterboys.
Their songs were coated in banjo and fiddle; Mumford’s affected American twang suggested someone who’d bawled his way through one Eagles tune too many at karaoke night.
But their spiritual and emotive songs were enormously popular. In 2009, they played their first Irish show, at a two-thirds-empty Crawdaddy (capacity circa 300). Fast forward 18 months and they were headlining Electric Picnic, half the Irish rugby team joining them on stage for the encore.
Can they repeat that surprise early success with their new LP, Babel? They’ve given themselves the best possible chance. One of those canny second records that sounds like a slightly slicker version of its predecessor, the album is brimming with all of Mumford and Sons’ signature touches: the easy-to-hum tunes, the raw emoting, the thumping country instruments.
“We’re a lot more self-confident on this one,” says Mumford. “Well, okay, we are not confident that it will be well-received. We have no idea how it will go down and, anyway, it’s all subjective. So you don’t worry about that. However, we feel we have done an all-round better job. I am more confident about this collection of songs, the way it was recorded, than I was with the last one. It’s quite a nice feeling, actually.”
Alongside their thousands of fans, Mumford and Sons have attracted a large club of detractors. The Fall’s Mark E Smith spoke for many when he recalled hearing the band tune up at Electric Picnic in 2011: he compared them to “a load of retarded Irish folk singers.”
“All musicians are insecure and, as a group, we are self-deprecating,” says Mumford.
“However, you get to the point where you think, ‘fuck it, we like what we do and it’s fine to feel that way’. If other people don’t like it, well, we aren’t going to force them to. We can stand behind the new record and say we are proud of it, that it’s the best we could do.”
He rolls his eyes when the band’s famed ‘waist-coat’ chic is discussed. Critics mention the band’s fashion — which has a whiff of ‘Jack Wills goes to the farm’ about it — as though it were a badge of inauthenticity. Mumford is asked about his sartorial preferences so often he gives canned answers. He says the band’s image was never calculated and should not be used as a truncheon with which to beat them.
“I started wearing a waist-coat to conceal my belly,” he says, repeating a line he has spun in several earlier interviews. “I sweat a lot on stage, so I didn’t want to wear a jumper. That’s the only reason I did it. I’m wearing a t-shirt today. That’s about as rock’n’roll as I get, wearing a white t-shirt and not caring what anyone thinks.”
Mumford’s life has changed immeasurably since the band took off.
Several months ago, he got hitched to Oscar-nominated actress Carey Mulligan. They live in a big house outside London and, though he refuses to discuss his private life (or his posse of A-list friends), it’s obvious that the stability of marriage agrees with him.
“I don’t have many other life experiences outside of touring in a group,” he says. “Okay, there are our personal lives. But those aren’t really involved in our band lives. Can success change how you work? I don’t know. We try not to second guess ourselves too much. We do what feels natural.”
Mumford has also been kept grounded by his three band-mates. They were friends before any of them became famous pop stars.
“There is no room for any prima donnas in our band,” he says. “We keep each other in check. If there’s any hint of an ego, someone will keep the other person in line. There’s no getting too big for your boots. It isn’t tolerated.”
Mumford and Sons were formed at a London club night called Bosun’s Locker. Initially, they were strictly a local affair. They’d perform at parties and pubs around the city. Gradually, word got out about these four, well-heeled urbanites who sang and played as though they’d just fetched up from a barn-dance in the sticks.
The moment they knew Mumford and Sons was going to be a long-term undertaking was when, without any promotion, they sold out the Lumiere venue. Their overnight rise had begun.
Babel was written in unusual circumstances. Rather than following convention and devoting a set period of time to the studio, Mumford and Sons wrote and recorded in the midst of a year-round touring schedule.
Many artists would have baulked at the work-load. However, Mumford and the rest of the group seem addicted to the thrill of live performance.
Even when it would have been the smart thing to do, they can’t bring themselves to give up the touring habit.
“We never partitioned it into writing time and touring time,” he says. “We wrote, toured and recorded, basically trying to do all three at once. It was alright. It’s a different way of approaching the whole thing.
“But I think the results are good. The record has a lot more of the ‘road’ in it than the first one.”
* Babel is out now. Mumford and Sons play O2 Dublin, Dec 16
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