Photograph by Randall Vasquez at Copps Coliseum (2011).
They’re due to have one of the biggest albums of 2015 and – love them or hate them – you’re bound to hear a lot about Mumford & Sons this year.
The first thing you’re probably going to hear about is the surprise show they hosted at Lee’s Palace, a Toronto venue far smaller than anything the four-piece has played in recent years. Announced just a day before, about 600 fans got the chance to experience the band’s new record all intimate, up-close, and live. Those were the lucky ones, hastily snatching up tickets that had gone on sale that morning and hard to come by thanks to Ticketmaster issues and sheer demand – showing up later on Kijiji for up to $1,000 a pop.
You’ll also hear about Wilder Mind, the band’s forthcoming third album. Much has already been said about the effort. People have noted the band’s abandonment of their trademark banjos and accompanying folk tunes and their adoption of more arena (and festival) rock ready material. This is true, though I’m not sure the comparisons to Coldplay are quite warranted. Indeed, looking at the album’s producer, James Ford, I’d be more inclined to say this is Mumford & Sons on the Arctic Monkeys’ path. While I can see where the anthemic quality of Coldplay may factor in, this stuff is far more snarling, grand, and lyrical: making it more Alex Turner than Chris Martin.
You’ll have to wait and hear for yourself on May 4, however. It’s unlikely that recordings of the Toronto show will surface given the band’s request that all phones and cameras be checked at the door. It says a lot for Mumford & Sons’ dedicated fan base that, after standing out in the pouring rain for hours on end, they were more than happy to oblige – handing over their devices and giving the band their full, undivided attention for the duration of Friday night’s show.
The excitement inside the packed venue was palatable, the crowd quick to cheer as soon as the band walked on stage and at any notable instrumental moment – even if none of them involved a banjo. It was an enthusiasm that vocalist/guitarist Marcus Mumford noted himself, telling everyone they had played secret shows in London, Berlin, and Los Angeles but that the Toronto audience was “by far the most welcoming crowd.”
Playing exclusively new material can be a daunting thing, given the crowd’s unfamiliarity with it, but Toronto was more than happy to forgo the tentative and oblige the foreign, cheering on an instrumental burst that roared to life in set opener “Snake Eyes” and yelling out their appreciation for various other numbers throughout the night.
The audience was happy to jump in where they could do though and third song of the night “Believe”, as the first (and only) officially unveiled album track, welcomed a crowd sing-along – Marcus Mumford red in the face from its from-the-gut delivery. The fourth number, “Monster”, was another interesting addition to the band’s catalogue, lyrics ringing out: “So fuck your dreams… I’ll turn into a monster for you if you pay me enough,” over sparse guitars, violin, and bass. Later in the set, on “Broad-Shouldered Beasts”, they definitely channeled The Band’s “The Weight” singing “take it out on me” over an acoustic guitar and harmonies aplenty.
“The Wolf” was probably the biggest highlight of the evening: jittering guitars from Winston Marshall highlighting lyrics of longing and questions of love. It was a huge track that boomed around Lee’s Palace and will definitely find a comfortable home for the band’s upcoming bigger shows. “Ditmas”, meanwhile, sounded every bit like it belonged in a Canadian beer commercial and was also received well by the crowd.
Mumford & Sons, for their part, were dressed every part the dapper rock band, clad in uniform black. They seemed genuinely happy about performing, too – Marcus telling the crowd he felt like he was playing to family. “Sorry for being fucking idiots and booking a gig on Good Friday. Our bad,” he also joked at one point, wishing everyone a happy Easter and Passover.
“I’m starting to realize we didn’t put that many songs on the album,” Marcus said nearing the end of the hour-long set. Unfortunately jokes about karaoke to pass the time never came to fruition, nor did requests for a story – the band instead turning the tables on the crowd to provide one, Marcus taking a bit of a (friendly) dig at Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeroes in reference to their mid-show story time sessions.
While the end of their show (featuring “Hot Gates” and an encore of “Only Love”) seemed closer to their older material thanks to the harmonies, it was certainly still material that kept close to the newly adopted electric guitars and clamouring percussion and bass. All in all, the takeaway lesson was that it was big sounding and that Mumford & Sons are more than festival ready.
The sneak-peek at new material seems the inevitable evolution of a band that spent their first two albums so engrained in the folk-banjo pastiche that they almost became a walking mockery of it.
They didn’t need to work hard to win over the crowd because it was a gathering of people already in their pocket. But they did, and they did it with material that held up on first listen. What’ll be interesting now is to see how a) these songs fit within set lists containing older tracks, given the new direction; and b) how people who weren’t initially fans of Mumford & Sons will respond to it. It’s ambitious and it’s energetic and it’s bound to be a hit, so apologies to all the non-Mumford & Sons fans in advance.
With all that said, fear not if you missed out on Lee’s Palace. While the intimacy was nice, it’ll sound great booming out over a much larger landscape as well. I’m taking a wild guess here, but I’m also pretty confidant these guys will end up on the WayHome festival bill. They are, after all, headlining Bonnaroo so it would make a whole lot of sense. With the promise to return by the summer, it’s a plausible thing. With their new material sounding like this, it’ll be perfect in the kind of festival setting that WayHome is fixing to bring to the Ontario market, too. (That or I’m totally wrong and they’re adding another Gentlemen of the Road stopover. But this seems less likely because I figure they would have already announced that. Okay, I’m just going to end my hypothesizing now…)
Set List:
Snake Eyes
Wilder Mind
Believe
Monster
Just Smoke
Broad-Shouldered Beasts
The Wolf
Tompkins Square Park
Ditmas
Hot Gates
—
Only Love
