By the time Mumford & Sons got to album four, they had a choice: keep refining the banjo-folk arena formula that made them a global draw, or tear it apart and see what was left. When I caught up with Ben Lovett and Ted Dwane, they’d clearly chosen a bit of both. Delta, they said, was their “wildly experimental” record — and it came with four extremely sunny thematic pillars: “death, divorce, drugs, and depression.”
Lead single “Guiding Light” hinted at the sound, but Lovett was quick to temper that. “It’s just one point in the direction of what we’ve got going on here,” he explained. “This is our fourth album, and in many ways it feels like it could be a seminal moment. We can’t define that — the listeners will — but from our side, we’d like Delta to be that moment. The kind that roots us into doing something important with our lives.”
Some of the experimentation was born out of their work with Paul Epworth, a producer known for both chart-toppers and left turns. “Paul’s studio is built in a way that you can try anything,” Dwane said. “There’s programming gear, loads of beautiful analog stuff, and a vibe that serves the song. We came in with a big cache of material, and every one of those songs could have gone a million directions. Paul’s the perfect guy for that.”
Lovett admitted that the sound wasn’t the only thing in flux. After seven years of playing arenas, they wanted to completely rethink the live show. “We were very fortunate to get into arenas back then, but we decided to put all of that under review,” he said. “This is going to be a brand-new show — very dynamic. We’ve got Stufish, Punchdrunk, and other collaborators helping us create something immersive. I don’t want to over-inflate expectations, but it’s not going to be us standing at the end of the room singing a song anymore.”
That desire for engagement went back to their earliest gigs. “From the pubs we started in, it was always about making people feel part of it,” Lovett said. “We’ve been lucky people like to sing along. It becomes an inclusive experience — now we’re just trying to represent that in a more efficient way than we have in the past.”
And while those four themes read like the world’s bleakest wedding toast, the band insisted the album’s perspective wasn’t hopeless. “We wanted to take those challenges head-on,” Lovett said. “Life is like a river delta — you move from everything you know toward the chaos of the ocean. At some point you’re standing at the edge of the earth, and you’ve got to face it. That’s what we want this album to embody.”
The result was an ambitious, 14-track set that they knew would test both themselves and their audience — exactly what you want from a “wildly experimental” fourth act. Or, as Lovett put it just before signing off, “Our spirits are high.”
And an interview with Marcus and Winston from 2015.
