Marcus Mumford returns to ACL Fest with personal and healing solo album

There’s no getting around the first 45 seconds of “Cannibal,” the first song on Marcus Mumford’s new self-titled solo album.

“I can still taste you, and I hate it,” Mumford sings. “That wasn't a choice in the mind of a child, and you knew it/ You took the first slice of me and you ate it raw/ Ripped it in with your teeth and your lips like a cannibal/ You (expletive) animal.”

It’s a very different album than the ones he’s made since 2009 with Mumford & Sons, the multiplatinum-selling English rock band that got big enough to headline the Austin City Limits Music Festival in 2016 and 2019. Mumford returns to ACL Fest this year under his own name, with a set focused on his new record.

More:A trip through 20 years of the Austin City Limits Music Festival

This one’s more intimate sonically, and far more vulnerable lyrically, than his albums with the band. Mumford has confirmed that he wrote “Cannibal” about sexual abuse he experienced as a child, and his recent decision to open up about it.

If his new music has been a form of therapy, Mumford would say it’s been working. “It feels now like it's more for other people than it is me,” he said last week by phone from a Bay Area tour stop. “Once I came to putting it out, I think if I’d needed something from it still, it would have been difficult to sing.

“But I got to the point where I was happy in myself, and able to own the story to the extent that I'm now able to sing it without feeling like I'm reliving anything. Which I think is a sign of healing, or at least the technical people would say so.

“So now that song is more about an ending than it is a beginning. And I feel like this audience is helping me know how to begin again, which is a lyric in the song. That song really is about turning over a new leaf.”

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Mumford is quick to assure that he hasn’t left the band that bears his name; they plan to reconvene next year and make a new Mumford & Sons record. But when he started writing this batch of songs, he knew it might warrant a different approach.

“Once I’d written the first two songs, ‘Cannibal’ and ‘Grace,’ I sent them around to the band and said, ‘Look, this is what I've been working on. I don't know what it's for yet, but I don't know if it's a band thing. Can we talk it through?’

“So we each talked it through individually, then we talked through collectively, and everyone felt like it wasn't a band thing. And I think that was right. We've always encouraged each other to collaborate outside of the band and do different things. I think it could bring us back together as better musicians, having gone away and learned other things from other people.”

Mumford specifically sought out women as collaborators on his new album. Brandi Carlile co-wrote and sang on the album’s final track, “How,” and Phoebe Bridgers sings on “Stonecatcher.” Others who appear as co-writers or guest singers include Julia Michaels, Monica Martin, Danielle Ponder and Clairo.

“Having been in a male-dominated working environment for such a long time, I didn't quite realize at the time how crucial women would be to the completion of this project,” says Mumford, who played drums for several years with British singer-songwriter Laura Marling before forming Mumford & Sons.

“I think I just needed some feminine energy to help me get through this,” he continues. “Every time I hit a brick wall, there was a woman who came along and lifted me out of it. Blake (producer Blake Mills) and I really tried to embrace that.”

Carlile’s support and contributions were “completely integral,” Mumford says. At a dinner one night in Los Angeles, Carlile approached him, sensing that he was “presenting differently in the world,” he recalls.

“She said, ‘Something's going on with you, which as your friend I want to understand.’ And I said, ‘Well, yeah, there's a story behind that. I'm very happy to share it with you if you have the time.'

“So we went for a drive and I played her ‘Cannibal’ and ‘Grace’ and ‘Only Child,’ and she was like, ‘I get it.’ We talked for a long time. She put her arm around me and said, ‘Dude, whatever it takes to get this thing out, I’m here for it.’ And I said, 'Well, there's a song I'm working on right now. Come to the studio, and help me finish that.’

“We went that morning to Sound City (a Los Angeles studio). Blake wasn't there actually that day; it was a Saturday. We finished the writing of that song, we cut it that morning, and that's the version that’s on the record.”

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One notable non-female collaborator was the guy who directed the video for “Cannibal.” Perhaps you’ve heard of Steven Spielberg. I asked Mumford if it was intimidating to work with the legendary filmmaker, who’d never done a music video before.

“He made it not feel intimidating, which I'm sure is part of his wizardry,” Mumford says. “It was just a group of friends making a piece of art together. It was me and my wife, him and his wife (actress Kate Capshaw), and their producer, who is one of their best friends, and who we've become very close with as well.”

Spielberg and Capshaw “were the first people outside of my close circle to hear it,” he explains. “Kate wrote to me and responded to it with such a fulsome letter. I was really blown away by how much she just got what I was trying to do.”

Mumford and his wife spent several hours talking with the couple, “and it just felt so safe, and strangely normal, like I said,” he recalls. “They took all the intimidation out of it. They normalized it, which was I think a magic trick. Because when you step back, you think, ‘Oh, wow, I was just in Steven Spielberg's only-ever music video.’ But they made it feel just really intimate and safe. It was the perfect way for me to start the presentation of this record.”

Presenting the record in theater-sized venues rather than the arenas Mumford usually plays has been refreshing as well. “I’m relishing it,” he says. “You don’t have to put on the same level of show with lights and movement that you have to do in an arena to keep people's attention, or to engage the people in the back row.

"I always sing my shows to the people in the back row, because I think if you can get the people at the back, you can get the rest of the room. With this, the room’s not so big, so you don't have to do as much of that theatrical stuff. You really just play the music and sing the songs and tell the story.”

Mumford's weekend-one set in Zilker Park on Sunday evening marked the first time he'd played the new songs in an outdoor venue. He told the crowd that ACL Fest was the very first show he booked for his current tour, largely because it's “one of my favorite festivals in the world,” as he explained in our interview. He's had some special moments here with Mumford & Sons, such as a 2019 headlining set when the group brought members of Austin High School's band onstage to be part of the performance.

“Headlining a festival twice within three years is unusual; we’d never done it before,” he recalls of Mumford & Sons’ 2016 and 2019 appearances. “I just felt really welcomed by the city of Austin, and always have been. I’ve got dear friends who live there, and I try and spend as much time there on tour as I can. I love the park, and I love the whole setup of the festival."

More:Our review of Mumford & Sons at ACL Fest 2019

“It's always a good festival to watch other bands,” he adds. “I remember watching Billie Eilish and Radiohead the last couple times we've been there. They make it really easy for artists to go see each other, which I think is conducive to a more communal-feeling festival. Sometimes it can be really in and out; you don't soundcheck, you don't often have a space to hang out, and getting between stages is hard for artists normally. But that festival just has a really good infrastructure. It's easier to get around and see other bands.”

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Marcus Mumford returns to ACL Fest with a highly personal solo album