On RUSHMERE, the banjo is back—because it never left.
The English-American folk trio Mumford & Sons are back. And so is the banjo. On March 28, the elder statesmen of the 2010s indie-foilk movement released RUSHMERE, their fifth studio album and first since 2018. And, yeah, RUSHMERE sounds like the Mumford & Sons of old. Not the Mumford & Sons from Wilder Mind and Believe, where they cosplayed like a mashup of The Kings of Leon and The National. What’s more, RUSHMERE finds the genre-chasing prodigals possibly returning to their faith, as well.
Oh, and look at what we have here. It’s my review of the album—in podcast form—on WORLD’s The World And Everything In It. (Web link here, too.) Like I’ve always said about myself: a face for radio and a voice for print. Jump to the 18:42 mark if it doesn’t autoplay from there.
I am pretty stoked about how the feature turned out. I am extremely grateful for the wonderful team of editors and audio engineers at WORLD who brought this to life. Hoping more such things can come to life in the future.
Some behind-the-scenes fun. The above photo shows some snowflake-smudged pages in my pocket notebook. On the second page, you can see a Taylor Swift reference taking shape, which, alas, did not make the final cut. (RIP.) And a quick making-of story. One afternoon, I went to a coffee shop to work on the VO script. Shortly after I arrived, this establishment played the full album, front to back, over the house speakers. It was a sign, I tell you.
As you may recall, Mumford & Sons have traditionally been reserved for autumn-only listening. But RUSHMERE dropped March 28. Listening to this band in spring was a new experience for me. I’ll maintain that Mumford & Sons are best experienced on roadtrips through the mountains of Colorado in late September, but RUSHMERE is a very good album for the spring. It is, as I note in my review, teeming with resurrection, restoration, and the sense that all things can be made new. I commend it to you this Eastertide.
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Hungry for more background on the indie-folk scene circa 2012? Here’s my mostly definitive rundown of the best and most relevant bands from that age, with a special focus on The Oh Hellos’ masterpiece, The Deep Dark Valley.
Above, I stated that Mumford & Sons are a trio. This was not always the case. In 2021, their banjo and lead guitarist, Winston Marshall, voluntarily left the band after fallout from a post he made on social media. Well, here he is in The Free Press with a super-interesting piece about his own return journey to faith and the banjo. (But I repeat myself.)
And for kicks and gigs, I also wanted to share one of my favorite reviews of RUSHMERE that I came across in my research. It comes from The Irish Times and opens with a sentence that sounds like it came from the Hipster Ipsum text generator: “As nu-folk figureheads, Mumford & Sons helped set the template for a sort of beard-positive weepy man-pop.”
This is what I want to do with my life: take walks in the snow and let sentences like that fall on me. Thanks, as always, for reading (and listening!).
