In the wake of the 2021 exit of banjo player (and son of the co-founder of GB News) Winston Marshall, Mumford & Sons have reverted to a trio for their fifth album. Marshall’s departure followed an outcry after he praised “alt-right” agitator Andy Ngo. Yet listening to Rushmere, one wonders whether the world might be a better place had every member of the band felt obliged to quit three years earlier, when news broke that they had hosted Jordan Peterson at their studio.
There’s a distinct back-to-basics feel to the album, the drearily unappealing (relative) experimentalism of 2018’s Delta ditched in favour of the grating folk hoedowns that first made their name or utterly insipid balladry. The default mood is self-pitying and self-justifying, which is even less attractive than that may sound. “I can’t say I’m sorry if I’m always on the run,” mewls Marcus Mumford on Anchor.
It’s so miserable that the irritating uptempo songs that recall 2012’s Babel (the title track, Surrender, Carry On) come across as a welcome relief. On the plus side the band have decided not to also resurrect their toffs-cosplaying-farmhands image this time around. Small mercies.
Source: theguardian.com
