Mumford and Sons – Rushmere Review

A band your dad definitely had a CD of in the glove box, Mumford and Sons are back with new songs for those twenty-minute drives. To be fair, Sigh No More had good company in Skrillex’s Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites and Mika’s Life in Cartoon Motion. Those drives were memorable more for the tonal whiplash than anything else. But the trouble is, and this is true for Rushmere too, the sense of place. Mumford and Sons were, for a period, one of the biggest bands around. They backed Bob Dylan at the Grammy Awards, they released chart-topping albums and no doubt this new tour of theirs will sell out. But it will sell out not for the quality of the album, which is minimal at best, but because people remember Mumford and Sons. We are numb without nostalgia, and there is no greater name to conjure nostalgia for Friday night swimming lessons and the Asda pizza selection than Mumford and Sons. 

Stomp and holler has been popularised again. The next generation has fallen for the tight joys of Noah Kahan. This is not a free pass for Mumford and Sons, but it is the closest shot at being relevant once more. Marcus Mumford feels the spirit again as he sings on opening song, Malibu. Whether that is the spirit of creativity or the sniff of a financially viable return is up for debate. Rushmere does little to progress the sound Mumford and Sons has. The same acoustic folk beat as their earliest works and relies more on the lyrical qualities than anything else. That is, with hindsight alongside us on this journey, a mistake. Emotional music for those without feeling. Just wait until the banjo and strings of Malibu kick in, it’ll bring a tear to the eye of those who have never felt the touch of a moving experience, the embrace of a loved one or a near-death experience.  

Mumford and Sons remains a band with plenty of experience on-stage; an instrumental skill is not in question, but what they do with it is. Questions over the sincerity of the band may have hounded Mumford and Sons since their debut, but the lacklustre sense of emotional interest, the uniqueness which gives any artist their route through the world, is lacking. Soft adaptations of acoustic noise with words of nil meaning, that is what Rushmere offers. Middle-of-the-road music, song after song of it. Comments of madness and sanity on the title track, the examples to precede and follow it, give nothing but a basic, binary opposite. Mumford and Sons recognise the bad in the good and use a near twenty-year-old sound to make it as tame-sounding as possible.  

Mumford has a strong voice but does little with it, the band still playing off the riffs and tip-offs of their old sound, coughing on the dust left behind by those moving stomp and holler tones into the present. There is an Americana sentiment running through Rushmere, which feels more like a hopeful pop at the market across the sea than anything artistically interesting. Rushmere is a tightly wound piece, where songs like Truth drag their feet, and yet still, the instrumentals are the best part. Restricted as they are, come to life in the latter half. Too little, too late. Inevitabilities of the album are what weakens it most. We have the soft and tender emotional draw with Where It Belongs, the booming instrumental thrill of Truth. It is a drag, all in all, with no concept of progression or storytelling between each song. Vaguely catchy at the best of times, Rushmere is more of the same from Mumford and Sons, which is all well and good but undermines the purpose of reuniting with new music to offer.