The last time I saw Mumford & Sons live, they blew all my preconceptions away. It was in the sweaty confines of Whelan’s last Arthur’s Day, when their half-hour set of ramshackle folk soared to the rafters, with banjo-player Winston Marshall taking crowd-surfing to a new level, being held aloft by audience members while still strumming away with gurning abandon. In the wide open spaces of the Phoenix Park, however, their ragged glories seem to dissipate into the summer evening long before they reach the edges of this massive venue.
Earlier in the day, following Ham Sandwich’s well-received opening set, we’d been entertained by Edward Sharpe And The Magnetic Zeros, whose mix of stoner country, bizarre banter and Johnny-and-June-style love-ins proved an interesting affair, even prompting a marriage proposal from one audience member. Then, it was the turn of The Vaccines’ catchy, inoffensive punk-pop to keep the kids pogoing in the sun, before Ben Howard did his best David Gray impression, and pretty good it was too.
But this one-day Gentlemen Of The Road mini-festival is all about the headliners, arguably the most bankable band on the planet right now and widely regarded as one of the more rambunctious, inclusive, life-affirming live acts currently treading the boards. Maybe they just had an off-day.
While the big, raucous singalong songs like ‘I Will Wait’ and ‘Roll Away Your Stone’ are large, boisterous and have the majority of the 40,000-strong sell-out crowd belting their lungs out, much of their performance is a little too sedate, and floats over the assembled masses rather than engaging them. Putting ‘Little Lion Man’ so early in the set (they play it second) is a gamble that doesn’t pay off. For all the beauty of songs like ‘Timshel’, with its delicious four-way harmonies, or ‘Lover Of The Light’, which sees Marcus relocating behind a full drum-kit, their emotional punch isn’t nearly as powerful in a big field as an indoor venue, and the majority of the crowd are simply killing time until the next folky anthem gives them the chance to attempt another bout of set-dancing. Indeed, by the time the encore comes around, the trickle of punters leaving early has become a flood. It’s a shame, because an uplifting ‘The Cave’ is followed by a delightfully shambolic take on Steve Earle’s ‘Galway Girl’, with all the earlier acts rejoining Mumford on stage for a Last Waltz-like closer.
While it has its moments where band and audience are communing as one multi-limbed organism, they’re a little too rare and perhaps Mumford are one more album away from really pulling off a gig of this size.