Marcus Mumford was two nights into a UK tour on Tuesday night after 10 weeks trekking across the US, and clearly enjoying home comforts. “It was fine, but they don’t get it,” he joked of his American audiences. “I got called a c**t on stage in Sheffield last night,” the Mumford & Sons frontman then beamed, thankful for playing in front of foul-mouthed Brits once again. “Go on my son!” a fan with a thick cockney accent then yelled during a tender version of Mumford & Sons track Awake My Soul just a few minutes into the gig, it was clearly good to be back.
Mumford was playing Shepherd’s Bush Empire – the first of two nights at the venue – on the back of his debut solo album, (self-titled). Released in September, the beautiful and tender record revolved around the revelation of sexual abuse the singer suffered as a child and has only recently come to terms with through therapy. To transmit its thematic journey through pain, anger and then towards forgiveness, Mumford wisely played the album in full and in order at the London gig.
Opening with Cannibal and its visceral, devastating story (“I can still taste you and I hate it / That wasn’t a choice in the mind of a child and you knew it”) he then went straight into Grace, a song about telling his mother – who was in attendance at the gig – of his trauma. Just as stunning and saddening as it is on record, the show was an emotional journey that showed the intensity and damage at the core of the album.
As well as a personal breakthrough, (self-titled) also served as something of a musical epiphany for Mumford, who travelled through shuffling rock songs (Dangerous Game), soaring anthems (Better Angels) and stark beauty (Better Off High) at the show before ending with closing track How, a song of forgiveness.
After the heavy if beautiful mid-section of the show, he fulfilled a previous promise to “f** around” at the show’s end, covering Taylor Swift’s Cowboy Like Me, a 2020 song he guested on. “Every week is Taylor Swift week, but the last couple of weeks have particularly been Taylor Swift week,” he smiled, noting the singer recently becoming the first artist ever to occupy each spot in the Billboard Top 10 chart.
From there, he covered two songs from his Elvis Costello-featuring supergroup The New Basement Tapes, before sending everyone home with an unplugged singalong of Mumford & Sons’ biggest hit, I Will Wait. It added some levity to the end of a largely serious and sober show, but the messages on (self-titled) – transmitted so beautifully and starkly here – were truly worth hearing.
