“Hey! Did you call? Did you fall? Do you need someone?” an impassioned Marcus Mumford asks on his band’s irresistible new single “Banjo Song”. Earthy and earnest as ever, his urgent questions come bolstered by the raw strum of the instrument for which the band were once both celebrated and mocked in equal measure. After a couple of rockier albums (2015’s Delta and 2018’s Wilder Mind), the band returned to a rootsier sound on 2025’s Rushmere. Now, just nine months later, their sixth album, Prizefighter, sees them doubling down on their original USP with glorious gusto. What’s more, they’ve brought a whole crew of A-list guest stars along for the ride, with the likes of Gracie Abrams, Hozier, Chris Stapleton and Gigi Perez swelling the singalong to a stadium-sized lock-in.
It’s surprising that Mumford & Sons haven’t included more featured artists on their records; the nu-folk movement of the 2010s seemed almost as communal-cliquey as California’s Laurel Canyon singer-songwriter circle of the Sixties and Seventies. Mumford & Sons could be found playing gigs at the tiny (now defunct) Bosun’s Locker beneath a pasty shop in Fulham, along with acts such as Noah and the Whale, Laura Marling, Emmy the Great, Johnny Flynn, and King Charles. It was a lax venue where many of the underage musicians could guarantee getting served alcohol, clinking warm pints between strumming battered guitars. But eventually that scene splintered as Mumford & Sons hit the international mainstream.
