Album Review: Mumford & Sons, Prizefighter

The wax isn’t dry on Mumford & Sons long-anticipated album Rushmere, and hot on its heels comes Prizefighter. Intriguingly, when you press play, it’s not the voice of Marcus Mumford who greets you, but multi-Grammy winning behemoth Chris Stapleton, on country-blues opener ‘Here’.

And the big hitters keep coming, with our own man Hozier sprinkling his magic dust on ‘Rubber Band Man’, and gelling perfectly, like a fourth Mumford son. Notably, it’s National man Aaron Dessner in the producer hot seat – the band previously worked with him on their third record Wilder Mind – and he beautifully captures the quicksilver character of the sessions.

Indeed, you can sense an environment of few takes and a whole heap of fun across ‘The Banjo Song’ and ‘Run Together’. Mid-record, a dyad of indie-folk ballads – ‘Alleycat’ and ‘Prizefighter’ – are raw, stark and candidly frank, while ‘Begin Again’ exhibits the type of euphoric alt-rock that Mumford & Sons do at their ease.

Elsewhere, label-mate Gigi Perez performs a wonder turn on ‘Icarus’, while pop-folker Gracie Abrams lights up ‘Badlands’, a Terence Malick cultural meld for the 21st century. Finally, ‘Clover’ is a pastoral ode to contentment and home-life serenity, bringing proceedings to a satisfying conclusion.

7/10