Delta
On 2015’s *Wilder Mind* Mumford & Sons went electric, ditching the banjos and acoustic guitars for a more plugged-in sound. Those instruments return on their fourth album, but a whole lot more has been added to the palette. *Delta* is their boldest collection to date, marrying their intimate introspection and massive hooks with restless musical curiosity. “I remember when we first played *Wilder Mind* to our booking agent in the States,” Marcus Mumford told Beats 1 host Zane Lowe. “His first comment was, ‘Now you guys can do whatever you want. You’re not the banjo band anymore.’ It was probably a bit reactionary from us: ‘Let’s do it without these acoustic instruments in our hands.’ And I guess, on this record, it felt like, ‘Look, let’s just not restrict ourselves at all. Let’s use whatever powers we have, whatever kind of instrumentation we have, and let’s try and do the best we can with it.’” Key to reaching new peaks, they decided, was trying to encompass each member’s diverse musical tastes into their songs. So while the quartet’s nu-folk roots are still traceable in the harmonies and troubled soul of opener “42” and the insistent banjo riff on “Beloved,” there are also successful journeys into electronic pop and hip-hop beats (“Woman,” “Rose of Sharon”), alt-R&B (“Picture You”), and foreboding psych-rock (“Darkness Visible”). The centerpiece of their experimentation is “If I Say,” which swells from spartan beginnings to orchestral grandeur and fiery rock crescendo. “We like to explore the idea of epic,” keyboardist Ben Lovett, who wrote the track, told Lowe. “I was actually asleep in an apartment in New York and I dreamt this song. And then I went into my bathroom and recorded it on my voicemail at 3 a.m.. I sent it to everyone the next morning, and they were like, ‘Yeah, OK, that’s a song.’ Sometimes we do send stuff to each other and it’s just like crickets, y’know?” The aching “Wild Heart” recognizes that there can still be great beauty in simplicity, but *Delta* is Mumford & Sons at their most free-spirited. “I think we feel younger,” said Lovett. “I feel like this is us just getting into it. We spent the whole of this year \[2018\] just pouring ideas, and it was just such a fertile period. It’s partly why the album is called *Delta*—the most fertile ground of a river. I think that there will come a time for those quieter, more reflective moments; it’s just not what we’re about right now. We wanna push it on.”
Having shed the beardy affect and folksy shuffle, the band could now slip mostly unnoticed between Imagine Dragons and twenty one pilots, but their newly palatable sound could really use more quirks.
Marcus and co. reinvent themselves once more, turning in a wildly eclectic record that veers from lush orchestral arrangements to indie R&B
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It’s all very dramatic, both thematically and sonically, with virtually every track following the same pattern: quiet, bit louder, LOUD
Don't take the title of Mumford & Sons' fourth album literally: maybe it's named after the birthplace of the blues, but Delta doesn't have much to do with American roots music of any kind.
The band were once adept at uniting disparate influences, but it’s a knack they’ve lost
Rectifies the dissonance between intimate songwriting and high-end programming and production.
Mumford and Sons - Delta review: A series of surprisingly coherent and original steps forward...followed by a series of steps both backwards and sideways.
Visiting producer Paul Epworth at Church Studios this year, I was struck by the variety of instruments scattered around:
A decade on from their debut, the British darlings of Americana explore new musical territory. CD New Music review by Liz Thomson