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Mumford & Sons: Delta

 A l b u m   D e t a i l s


Label: Island Records
Released: 2019.11.16
Time:
 61:48
Category: Folk Rock, Alternative Rock
Producer(s): Paul Epworth
Rating:
Media type: CD
Web address: www.mumfordandsons.com
Appears with:
Purchase date: 2020
Price in €: 1,00





 S o n g s ,   T r a c k s


[1] 42 (M.Mumford/W.Marshall/B.Lovett/T.Dwane) - 4:00
[2] Guiding Light (M.Mumford/W.Marshall/B.Lovett/T.Dwane) - 3:37
[3] Woman (M.Mumford/W.Marshall/B.Lovett/T.Dwane) - 4:34
[4] Beloved (M.Mumford/W.Marshall/B.Lovett/T.Dwane) - 4:25
[5] The Wild (M.Mumford/W.Marshall/B.Lovett/T.Dwane) - 5:31
[6] October Skies (M.Mumford/W.Marshall/B.Lovett/T.Dwane) - 3:43
[7] Slip Away (M.Mumford/W.Marshall/B.Lovett/T.Dwane) - 4:55
[8] Rose of Sharon (M.Mumford/W.Marshall/B.Lovett/T.Dwane) - 3:23
[9] Picture You (M.Mumford/W.Marshall/B.Lovett/T.Dwane) - 4:03
[10] Darkness Visible (M.Mumford/W.Marshall/B.Lovett/T.Dwane) - 3:11
[11] If I Say (M.Mumford/W.Marshall/B.Lovett/T.Dwane) - 4:29
[12] Wild Heart (M.Mumford/W.Marshall/B.Lovett/T.Dwane) - 5:05
[13] Forever (M.Mumford/W.Marshall/B.Lovett/T.Dwane) - 4:36
[14] Delta (M.Mumford/W.Marshall/B.Lovett/T.Dwane) - 6:16

 A r t i s t s ,   P e r s o n n e l


Marcus Mumford - Vocals, Guitar, Drums, Mandolin
"Country" Winston Marshall - Vocals, Banjo, Guitar, Resonator Guitar
Ben Lovett - Vocals, Keyboards, Accordion, Drums
Ted Dwane - Vocals, String Bass, Drums, Guitar

Yebba - Additional Vocals on [1,4,6,8]
Maggie Rogers - Additional Vocals on [8]
Gill Landry - Spoken Word on [10]
Evelyn - Extra Voice on [14]
Wilfred - Extra Voice on [14]

Paul Epworth - Producer
Riley MacIntyre - Engineer
Luke Pickering - Additional Engineer
Chloe Kraemer - Assistant Engineer
Randy Merrill - Mastering
Tom Elmhirst - Mixing

 C o m m e n t s ,   N o t e s


Delta is the fourth studio album by British band Mumford & Sons. It was released on 16 November 2018 through Gentlemen of the Road and Island Records. The album was recorded at The Church Studios in London with producer Paul Epworth. The album reached number one on the US Billboard 200 and number two on the UK Albums Chart. The album was supported by the lead single, "Guiding Light", which premiered on 20 September 2018 on BBC Radio 1. It was also supported by a 60-date world tour that began in November 2018. The band recorded more than 25 songs with Paul Epworth at The Church Studios, and were intent on keeping the "collaborative spirit" of their live shows and 2016 EP Johannesburg. Marcus Mumford has said that much of the album was recorded in "non-gender specific Friday night lads sessions" with friends where they would play music, "smoke cigarettes and have a great time". Around 100 people were involved in these sessions, with some being featured on the record, including American singer-songwriters Maggie Rogers and Gill Landry.

Delta has been called an album that "draw[s] on the shared experience of being on and off" tour, and distinct from the band's "anthemic" previous album, 2015's Wilder Mind, in that it is more "tender", "introspective and reflective". It incorporates elements of electronica, rap and jazz. It has been said to still contain the "intimacy and jubilance" that the band is known for, but keyboard player Ben Lovett said it is also concerned with "the four Ds: death, divorce, drugs and depression". Mumford spoke to Annie Mac about reusing folk instruments they did not use on Wilder Mind but being "conscious [about] how we can make these instruments sound not like these instruments which opened up a whole new world for us". Delta received mixed reviews from music critics. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalised rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album received an average score of 59, based on 18 reviews. Delta debuted at number one on the US Billboard 200 with 237,000 album-equivalent units, including 214,000 pure album sales. It is Mumford & Sons' third US number-one album. It was beaten to the top spot in the UK by Michael Bublé's Love.

wikipedia.org



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. Working with producer Paul Epworth - a Grammy winner for his work with Adele who also helmed efforts by U2 and Rihanna - Mumford & Sons pick up where Wilder Mind left off, choosing to expand that 2015 album's glossy adult alternative instead of abandoning its refined aesthetic. The twist Epworth introduced lay entirely in the studio. He had the band bring in their trademark acoustics but treated these old-fashioned instruments with a host of digital effects, so they rarely sounded like a guitar and banjos. Perhaps this had a liberating effect on Mumford & Sons, allowing them to jam and create in ways both familiar and new, but it's hard to hear a kinetic spark on Delta. Rather, it's a measured and subdued affair, proceeding at a deliberate pace and unfurling at a hushed volume; even at its loudest moments, it seems quiet, even muffled. This kind of well-manicured production, when paired with a series of songs focused on internal journeys, ultimately has a lulling effect. There is a pulse, but it's soft and turned electronic. There is emotion, but it's been intentionally encased in a digital cocoon, one that flattens the group's bold accents (such as an embrace of vocoders) and turns Delta into soft, shimmering background music, ideal for any soothing setting you'd like.

Stephen Thomas Erlewine - AllMusic.com



Visiting producer Paul Epworth at Church Studios this year, I was struck by the variety of instruments scattered around: alongside double bass, grand piano, acoustic and electric guitars, there were mandolins, accordions, all kinds of exotic folk and percussive instruments and a formidable array of banjos. "Have you got Mumford & Sons in here, by any chance?" I asked.

The Mumfords may be the most unlikely success story of the modern pop era, an old-fashioned quartet of folk rockers who stand like luddites in the path of the all-consuming electronic dance behemoth. Their first three albums all topped the transatlantic charts. For their fourth album, Delta, they have brought in Epworth, the producer behind Adele.

You can just about detect a new patina of synths and vocoder effects, although when the band is at full tilt, you could probably hide a kitchen sink in the blizzard of sound. This lusty rambunctiousness is balanced by passages of gentle intimacy, with everything dropping out to leave shadings of percussion and chords under Marcus Mumford's world-weary vocals.

"What if I need you in my darkest hour?" he asks on the opening track, 42. Given the band's background in the Vineyard church, he presumably refers to Psalm 42, which pleads for God to show himself in a time of political trouble. A struggle between light and darkness permeates Delta, and soon a particular characterisation of darkness takes hold.

Picture You grapples with the onset of depression, culminating in a storming coda called Darkness Visible, after the American author William Styron's 1990 memoir about his mental health. The phrase is itself borrowed from Milton's Paradise Lost, excerpts of which are recited while the Mumfords unleash their angst on the entire contents of the studio. It is a furious, overloaded, utterly thrilling piece. Mumford & Sons have steadfastly declined to identify themselves as a Christian band, preferring to assert their faith in the transformative power of music. Delta is their best album yet, spiritual solace wrapped in secular anthems.

Neil McCormick - 15 November 2018
© Telegraph Media Group Limited 2020



There’s a track on Mumford & Sons eclectic fourth record, ‘Delta’, that has three banjos layered on top of one another. It’s called ‘Woman’ and is, somewhat improbably, a foray into slinky R&B. There are some tracks on this album that contain up to seven banjos, but you’d never know, given that they’re obscured, recorded live and then sampled at super-producer Paul Epworth’s north London studio. Frontman Marcus Mumford recently told NME: “We sampled like Skrillex and chopped up beats like Kanye”. We’re a long way from ‘Little Lion Man’.

Mumford & Sons, having emerged from the London indie-folk scene in the late noughties, made their name with the sound perfected on that debut single: rinky-dink banjo, thunderous percussion, deeply earnest lyrics and a waistcoats-and-linen-shirts look that led Charlie Brooker to call them “trust fund wurzels”. After two albums, they reinvented themselves as leather jacket-clad arena rock stars with 2015’s coolly received, electric guitar-led ‘Wilder Mind’. Here they’ve split the difference, using the instruments of old to create something entirely new.

So ‘Woman’ and ‘Rose of Sharon’ (which features their protégé Maggie Rogers) are languid alternative R&B jams; the former beginning with Marcus purring ‘Woman’ with such raunchiness that we must assume his brief dalliance with rockism has left a lasting mark.

But that’s not the whole story: there are also straight-up acoustic ballads (the genuinely devastating ‘Beloved’, an ode to a loved one, on which Marcus croons, “Before you leave, you must know you are beloved”), lush orchestral arrangements that sometimes veer into Disney territory (recent single ‘If I say’), brooding spoken-word (‘Darkness Visible’) and even Bon Iver-style emotive autotune (the hushed coda on ‘October Skies’). Like we said: it’s eclectic.

There are standout moments – the aforementioned ‘Beloved’, the full-hearted chorus of lead single ‘Guiding Light’, the delicate tinkle of piano underpinned by a dog barking in the distance on ‘October Skies – but you must sift through these sprawling 14 tracks to find them.

Banjo player Winston Marshall told NME: “This isn’t our first album and we know it won’t be our last, so we feel freedom.” A decade after they began their bid to become the most popular band in the world, Mumford & Sons are still pushing into unfamiliar territory. Lyrically, the record deals with the onset of maturity and this, combined with that forward-thinking approach, suggests Mumford & Sons are here for the long haul. It’s a far from perfect album, but the band’s hunger for new sounds must be applauded.

Jordan Bassett - 23 November 2018
© 2020 NME
 

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