- When we make music, we make it
to fairly represent where we're at.
This is Mumford & Sons in 2018,
"Guiding Light" is kind of a window into this album of work.
♪ 'Cause even when there is no star in sight ♪
♪ You'll always be my only guiding light ♪
- It's been over such a long period of time that we've...
I think we've been recording on and off for
six months in Paul Epworth's Studio in Crouch End in London.
And so over that time we've been in and out of
listening to so many different types of music,
which we do anyway between the four of us.
We listen to every kind of music under the sun
and it's quite normal that we would do that,
each of us individually and together go from genre to genre.
The actual tricky thing is trying to make that
work on a record together.
And, I'm not quite sure how Paul did that but
I think he's done it... I don't know how he did it.
- [Marcus Mumford] About December last year
we'd collected about thirty-five songs in various forms
and we then went and did what we call 'A Campfire Test'
on all those songs.
We recorded them just with either acoustic guitar
or a piano and one voice, to see where we were at
in terms of the writing process,
and that brought up quite a few questions about style
and about treatment for songs.
And then when we got to the studio with Paul,
we spent the first two weeks recording as fast as we could.
We ended that first couple of weeks with like
twenty-eight / twenty-nine first versions
like first passes at songs.
On some of them we didn't come back to them then
for like a couple months 'cause then we'd start going back
to the first one, we did almost chronologically.
And a couple of months later we'd listen to something
and be like "That's pretty close."
Or we'd listen and say "That is dreadful.
We really need to start again on that one."
So it was interesting time played a part
in the record for sure.
It's left us with more songs than we needed for a record
which is an unusual place for us to be in.
I think it's a really privileged place for a band to be in,
and quite excited about what happens next
'cause I'm sure something will be involved after "Delta"
which seems like a bizarre thing to be talking about
right now, but we've already blocked out a couple of months
next year and amongst quite a lot of tour dates to record -
get back in the studio.
We've really got the recording, it's an itch at the moment.
And yeah, we've been recording more than ever.
This record...
in general...
has a lot more reference to elemental stuff than before.
And that I think just comes from
spending a bit more time outdoors actually.
And I think we were using
some of the more natural,
elemental references as touch points for
some of the things we wanted to say on the record.
You know the "Delta" itself to us represents something,
or represents lots of things really,
but it's kind of natural phenomenon, and something elemental
that we enjoyed kind of exploring a bit.
- It was pretty important to be able to run away
every now and then... it wasn't just one block of recording.
We kind of had a few runs at it,
and then we would either go as a band,
we would go and do some shows out in the world.
Or we would take some time,
we've each got kind of
places we like to run away to
and massively it all just feeds back in.
I think it's we see ourselves as kind of a hybrid
of urban and rural,
and we all grew up in cities pretty much,
but we do appreciate the great outdoors, you know?