Mumford and Sons air new single, ‘Believe’

This is different. Mumford and Sons have broken cover with the first taster of their new, more electric direction with new track ‘Believe’.

Premiered as Annie Mac’s first Hottest Record on BBC Radio 1, the first song to be lifted from new album ‘Wilder Mind’ was produced by James Ford (Arctic Monkeys, HAIM, Florence & The Machine) and will be released as a single on 27th April.

The album itself will follow on May 4th, with a number of tracks written at Aaron Dessner from The National’s studios in Brooklyn.

Speaking to Annie Mac, Marcus Mumford addressed the big banjo-free shift: “It was intentional and it was natural. It was just the way we were playing naturally, there wasn’t some big burning of banjos meeting.”

The track was written on a ranch in Texas, says Marcus. “I left a day early and by the time we all got back to London, we had this song.”

Last week, Marcus said that the new record is “a development, not a departure. I think all of us had this desire to shake it up,” he explains. “The songwriting hasn’t changed drastically; it was led more by a desire to not do the same thing again.”

And here’s the curveball - ‘Wilder Mind’ is set to be completely banjo-free. “Towards the end of the Babel tour, we’d always play new songs during soundchecks, and none of them featured the banjo, or a kick-drum,” says Marcus. “And demoing with Aaron meant that, when we took a break, we knew it wasn’t going to involve acoustic instruments.”

“We chose instruments that played well off each other, rather than consciously trying to overhaul it,” adds Ben Lovett.

Mumford & Sons played a tiny show at London Oslo earlier tonight (9th March). They’ve announced a second date at the venue, taking place tomorrow night (10th March). Tickets are on sale from 9AM tomorrow.