Mumford & Sons: "I want to take the art seriously, but we’ve got to take ourselves slightly less seriously"

It’s been the guts of 18 years since a young, admittedly shy Mumford & Sons stood in front of a shaky camera on an apartment balcony above Dublin’s Dame Street, and performed their unreleased track ‘The Banjolin Song’.

“It was wicked,” Marcus Mumford says now, recalling the legendary, though now defunct, online Irish music series, BalconyTV. “It was our first sort of TV appearance, and we were very nervous. That’s basically the only version of that song that exists now.”

Just a year or two later, the London-formed band would be catapulted to stardom with the release of their debut album, Sigh No More, featuring the inescapably massive ‘Little Lion Man’ and ‘The Cave’. They’d go on, over the next decade or so, to score multiple Grammys and BRIT Awards, as well as billions of streams, as they established themselves as one of the biggest bands in the world.

Of course, that’s not all that has changed for that four-piece in the video. As of 2021, they’re now one member down, as founding member Winston Marshall took an unexpected detour into ‘free speech’ and ‘anti-woke’ commentary online. The remaining members of the band – Marcus Mumford, Ted Dwane and Ben Lovett – would subsequently distance themselves from those politics, and performed at a Kamala Harris campaign rally in 2024.

But in other respects, Mumford & Sons in their current form are not a million miles away from those young men on the balcony. While you’d have to do some serious crate-digging to find a surviving recording of ‘The Banjolin Song’, the band – in what appears to be a nod to those early days – have included a new track, ‘The Banjo Song’, on their freshly released sixth album, Prizefighter.

“We were just like ‘Fuck it!’” Marcus remarks. “It’s exactly the kind of choice we would have made in 2009. I want to take the art seriously, but we’ve got to take ourselves slightly less seriously.”

We’re speaking in the basement of Soho House Berlin, a hotel so imposingly hip it’s got a Damien Hirst original hanging in the lobby. Marcus and Ted are in the city to host a special Prizefighter listening event for their German fans – who, in a few hours, will happily brave -9°C conditions to line up outside the Kreuzberg district’s Lido venue, well before doors open, for a chance to hear the album weeks ahead of its official release.

“With Prizefighter, we didn’t overthink it – for the first time, actually, since the first record,” Marcus resumes. “Some of these songs we wrote in the morning and then recorded in the afternoon. It was a more instinctive record than we’ve made for a long time. Our relationship in the band – with me, Ted and Ben – was more trusting, and in more good faith, than it’s ever been, and that meant we didn’t second-guess our gut choices along the way.”

Co-produced and co-written with The National’s Aaron Dessner at his Long Pond Studio in upstate New York, Prizefighter arrives less than 11 months after Mumford & Sons’ previous album, Rushmere – a project that ended a seven-year gap in their discography, and followed Marcus’s 2022 solo debut, Self-Titled.

“We were mixing Rushmere when Aaron Dessner walked into the room,” Marcus recalls. “We hadn’t seen him for a while, but he’s one of our best mates in music. He showed us a couple of things he’d been working on, and we showed him a couple of things – and suddenly, we’re four songs into making a record, after day one.”

“Aaron operates at a very cozy level,” says Ted. “He’s just making music for fun with his friends. So rather than walk into some big scary studio, in a big major city somewhere, going to his home, where he works, just had a very relaxed and enjoyable atmosphere. I think you can hear that on the record.”

IT TAKES A VILLAGE TO RAISE A BAND

They describe that record-making process as “really open and free” – with the door of the studio always open to friends and fellow musicians. It resulted in Mumford & Sons’ most collaborative album to date, with guest appearances from the likes of Chris Stapleton, Gracie Abrams and Gigi Perez – as well as Hozier, who features on the previously released single ‘Rubber Band Man’.

“I sent it to him, and we spent a long time talking about everything other than the song,” Marcus says of the roots of the Hozier link-up. “Then, we eventually got around to the song – and he was really up for it. He’s been a friend for a long time. We’ve collaborated on stage plenty, but never on a record, and this felt like a good time to do it.”

“We’ve always been a collaborative band, especially at our shows,” Ted adds. “So to actually reflect that on a recording has felt very natural.”

It’s a progression that Marcus also attributes to the band having become “a bit more comfortable in our own skins.”

“This record was made from a more confident, and more secure, place,” he nods. “We know who we are. That makes it easier to open the doors and invite other people in. We’re not worried about setting out our stall in the same kind of way anymore.

“And I think that’s also because we allowed each other space to grow as human beings,” he continues. “We allowed each other the space to go and collaborate with other people – which means you come back to the band more confident in yourself, but also more grateful for the fact that you’re in a band.”

That emphasis on collaboration also extends to artists who are just breaking onto the scene – whether it's the band offering emerging acts a platform on their tours, or Marcus lending his voice to tracks from both Divorce and Maisie Peters in recent months.

“It comes from a place of inspiration, honestly,” says Marcus. “I’m obsessing over Cameron Winter records, and Gracie Abrams records, and Olivia Dean records – just as a superfan of these musicians. So it just feels like a natural thing for us to do, to celebrate the music that we love, and introduce our audience to that – and just be real about what we like.”

As they point out, there were plenty of acts who extended a similarly supportive hand to Mumford & Sons when they were starting out.

“One of the things we’re most grateful for is The Maccabees taking us out on their UK tour,” Ted notes. “It was such a huge moment, and a timely thing for us.”

“And we had it from people like Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen – who put their arm around us at a certain time and said, ‘Come onstage with us,’” Marcus adds. “Neil Young did it. Joni Mitchell did it. These are heroes – but they did it just as human beings in a creative world. It takes a village to raise a band!”

HELL OF A WAY TO START A RECORD

Mumford & Sons' own impact over the years has been enormous, influencing current indie-folk heavy-hitters like Noah Kahan and Kingfishr (“Amazing band,” Marcus says of the latter). While they play the significance of their role down in conversation, they still acknowledge that it's "amazing to be part of the tapestry of the musical world", and "part of someone's story."

“We received it from other bands,” Marcus resumes. “Even those who don’t know it, and probably wouldn’t like our band! Whether they like it or not, they were part of our story. Growing up with Fleetwood Mac, or even Oasis and Radiohead – we wouldn’t be a band without those bands.”

Irish music, he says, was particularly important in those formative years.

“My obsession with The Cranberries goes back a long way,” Marcus smiles. “Not to mention traditional music, and bands like The Dubliners and The Pogues – they’re so crucial to who we are.”

As big fans of The Dubliners, getting to play a pop-up show in O’Donoghue’s Pub last summer – where the Irish group famously formed – was clearly a special moment.

“For sure – that’s one of our favourite pubs in the world,” Marcus tells me. “It was almost pointless because every time we’d start a song, they’d sing it back so loud that you couldn’t hear us anyway. But it was a good knees-up!

“You can’t escape The Pogues, if you grew up where we grew up, and same with The Dubliners, honestly,” he continues. “Even right the way through to contemporary Irish music – KNEECAP and CMAT, and the cultural effect that they’re having, and artists like Hozier. It’s pretty important stuff.”

CMAT at 3Arena on December 5th, 2025. Copyright Abigail Ring/ hotpress.com

As a fan of CMAT “very early on”, Marcus has been inspired to see the Irish star’s continued rise over the past few years.

“It’s amazing,” he enthuses. “I think she’s the real deal, and I can’t wait to see what she does next. It looked like she had a great time with our friend Brandi Carlile in Mexico – I saw some videos from that that looked really fun. They were doing karaoke at some point, which looked awesome.”

Like CMAT, Mumford & Sons have always drawn inspiration from the rich tradition of country music – but Prizefighter, and particularly its opening track, ‘Here’, featuring Nashville-based singer-songwriter Chris Stapleton, finds them stepping into that world with more conviction than ever.

“The country thing’s always been fascinating to us,” Ted reflects. “When we first went to America, we were almost a bit apologetic about it – we didn’t want anyone to take offense to a bunch of English guys wading into that water. But that just wasn’t what we were greeted with, at all. Going to the bluegrass festival in Telluride, and getting off a bus and getting a bear hug from Jerry Douglas, and these heroes of ours from the Nashville world, was astonishing. And those relationships have continued to deepen.

“It’s just really nice not to be apologetic about the world that we’re inhabiting, and the music that interests us,” he continues. “It’s a real relief to really express that, and lean into it.”

“I think ‘Here’ is our first straightforward country song,” Marcus agrees. “Chris hit it out of the park. He’s got such grit, and such experience in his voice, and in his delivery. Hell of a way to start a record, in my opinion!”

ANTI-ICE PROTESTS

The weeks leading up to the release of Prizefighter also happened to coincide with an unexpected resurgence of interest in a much older Mumford & Sons track. ‘White Blank Page’, from their 2009 debut album, began clocking up serious numbers on social media, in videos decrying the state of the world.

“I only found out about it fairly recently, with the anti-ICE protests in the States,” Marcus tells me. “We’re incredibly proud to be any small part of supporting that. For our music to be used – very strangely, and completely out of our control, to be honest with you – as part of a protest movement against that particular policy, has been one of the great privileges of our career, I’d say.

“We love America,” Marcus – who holds dual UK/US citizenship, having been born in California – continues. “We’ve travelled that country more than a lot of our friends, particularly on the coasts, have. We’ve gone deeper into what they’d probably call ‘flyover states’. And the policies of Trump’s government don’t reflect the nature of what we see in those towns – and the sense of hospitality and good neighbourliness that we experience. We’re shocked by it – and we’re stoked that our music is playing a small part in the resistance to it.”

ICE Agents in Minneapolis. Credit: Chad Davis

It is, as Marcus acknowledges, “a very strange time” to be in the US.

“People are afraid,” he resumes. “And it’s vulnerable communities that are afraid. That doesn’t seem to line up to these guys’ Christian ideals – to me, anyway.”

While he argues that the world would be in serious trouble if we started “looking to artists to tell you who to vote for, exclusively”, Marcus feels that “we’re always going to want prophets, priests and poets.”

“We’re also going to need political leaders with greater moral imagination than I think we have at the moment, to be able to bring peace to places like Gaza, Ukraine and Sudan,” he continues. “So we wouldn’t claim that artists have a role to play in diplomacy and politics necessarily, but I think we need culture, and I think we need opportunities for human connection, particularly in places where it feels like we’re all pointing at each other saying, ‘They’re the problem’ – and othering people.”

So what’s inspiring the band these days, in that broader sense?

“People with moral imagination,” Marcus reckons. “People who are able to imagine what it’s like being someone else – someone that they might even see as an enemy.

“And, people who are relentlessly creative,” he adds. “People like Aaron Dessner, honestly.”

Of course, given the rapid movement from Rushmere through to Prizefighter, it’s clear that the band are currently in the midst of their own “relentlessly creative” flow.

“It takes a bit to get to that point, and I think we are there now,” Ted nods. “We want to stay in this space, creatively – and just stay warm and fruitful…”

“Yeah, I don’t think we don’t want to turn off the tap quite yet,” Marcus agrees. “We’ve got a lot of ideas. I don’t want to explain exactly what the sound is, but it’s fun. There’s a lot kicking around, creatively – we haven’t exhausted ourselves yet!”

They tell me there will also be a few surprises in store when they return to Dublin’s Marlay Park in July – having previously headlined Longitude there back in 2017.

“We’ve got a bunch of stuff that we’re announcing for that show, which we haven’t been able to yet, in terms of artists,” Marcus reveals. “That show feels particularly special to us. It’s going to be a proper knees-up, that one.”

• Prizefighter is out now. Mumford & Sons play Marlay Park, Dublin on July 5.