Mumford and Sons: Second Album Is 'Black Sabbath Meets Nick Drake'

Mumford & Sons hang backstage and prepares for their set on day two of KROQ Almost Acoustic Christmas in Universal City, California.

Joseph Llanes

Mumford & Sons have been nominated for several Grammy Awards, including Record of the Year and Song of the Year (both for "The Cave"), and they're currently touring the West Coast as part of the radio station holiday show circuit. But the band tells Rolling Stone they're focusing primarily on finishing the follow-up to 2010's Sigh No More.

"We’re trying to stay as not stress-y and hectic as we can to write the best record we can," keyboardist Ben Lovett says.

The record is nearly done, according to bassist Ted Dwane. "[It's] certainly more mature, I’d say," he says. "The second record is just a reflection of our mindsets, where we’re all at. It’s doom folk, kind of like Black Sabbath meets Nick Drake."

Lovett adds, "It’s not like we are just listening to one style from one era. It’s finding the songs that really speak to us and then we discuss them, we share those songs around."

Among the artists that have spoke to them lately is fellow Brit and Grammy nominee Adele. "There’s a reason why it’s done what it’s done that goes beyond what any marketing campaign can ever do," Lovett says. "It’s not money – there’s brilliance there in writing a simple song. And it’s great to have that kind of appeal to people again. It’s not so much about the bells and whistles, it’s about the lyric and the melody."

Dwane points out that the band have always taken a more emotional, as opposed to cerebral, approach to songwriting. "It should come from emotions in your heart, not so much your head," he says.

The quartet have spent a lot of time this year crafting the next record, which is still unnamed and does not yet have a release date. "We spent a week in Nashville just writing, the four of us, kind of getting together any individual song ideas we had and playing them out. And then we did the same a few weeks ago down in the west country in the U.K.," Lovett says. "Even though we’re right in the heart of it, even in the studio sometimes doesn’t feel as free as it is just playing together. It’s brilliant."

The band's critical and commercial success has certainly influenced the second album, however. "It’s been really affirming because we started out with very humble aspirations. We never thought we’d be commercially viable and we were proved wrong," Dwane says. "It’s been a really great couple of years for the band and I suppose it has instilled us with confidence."

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Song Stories

“All Along the Watchtower”

The Jimi Hendrix Experience | 1968

Jimi Hendrix got hold of Bob Dylan's early John Wesley Harding tapes and in late 1967 recorded a version of "All Along the Watchtower" with the Experience in London. Dissatisfied with that first development, Hendrix brought those tapes with him to New York in early 1968 when he began work on Electric Ladyland. Eddie Kramer, Hendrix's engineer at the time, told Rolling Stone that Hendrix "was still looked upon by his basically white audience as the mammoth black guitar hero. There was a constant fight within him to expand himself." Hendrix's successful take on Dylan's work has long been recognized by the songwriter. "I liked Jimi Hendrix's record of this and ever since he died I've been doing it that way," Dylan wrote in the liner notes to his Biograph box set. "Strange how when I sing it, I always feel it's a tribute to him in some kind of way."

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