Album Review: Mumford & Sons – Prizefighter
3 min read
By this point, Mumford & Sons don’t need introducing. From folk-revival upstarts to stadium headliners, they’ve spent over a decade evolving, shedding banjos, embracing electrics, weathering criticism, and outlasting trends. Prizefighter, released via Island Records, feels like a nod to resilience, an endurance required to stay in the fight. As their fifth studio album, it comes post changes and reflections within the band, and carries the weight of experience and expectation rather than breakthrough ambition. Let’s see if this is about standing toe-to-toe in the ring for a duel of the ages, or taking a fall for a quick and easy pay out ….
Ding ding round one!! Here kicks the bout off with a slow sombre(ish) track, with Chris Stapleton adding his talents, in a well-constructed track, with the addition of electric guitars which I wasn’t really expecting, followed by Rubber Band Man – not a cover of the Spinners legendary track – but a pleasant acoustic invigorating track, which has great lyrics from Hozier, as well as a great tempo to the guitar string plucking. Track release The Banjo Song is one of pure love and joy (and Banjos, obviously), while Run Together is much from the old school Mumford & Sons – banjo’s, twelve string guitar strumming and Babel –like choruses… probably my favourite track on the album, if it wasn’t for the rawness of Conversation with My Son (Gangsters & Angels), which is an emotional masterpiece. Alleycat didn’t work for me, the tone spoken vocals with plucking strings which didn’t really build to anything, which can also be said for title track Prizefighter somewhat – though the guitar is a really good listen… and the track builds far better I don’t think I’m a fan of his spoken vocals!
Begin Again kicks off the second half of Prizefighter with some old school-style Mumford & Sons (that’s a good thing BTW), building to string filled busy choruses and a crescendo at the end. Gigi Perez lends their talents in the slow thumping beat of Icarus which builds to the end, while Stay has a catchy, meaningful chorus, and Badlands (with Gracie Abrams) is a minimalist, slow number with fantastic harmonies. Shadow of a Man has a country feel to it (pleasant enough though), while penultimate track I’ll Tell You Everything is lyrically excellent, and in the ‘final round’ we have Clover – slow tempo, beautiful vocal harmonies and a really great instrumentation come together for a very strong ending.
8…9…10… YOU’RE OUT!! What an absolute knockout of an album. Prizefighter has no skips, and, honestly, I was not in the right mood to listen to this album. It’s very much the old Mumford & Sons with some of the better parts of their journey since cherry-picked into this latest offering. Marcus has said how great of an album this would be, and he was not lying. There are obviously some tracks which will be added to my 20926 playlist, but, let’s face it, the whole album is being kept. I cannot wait to be in the right mood to listen to it… I know it will be an emotional roller-coaster. Consider this review officially ringside-approved – we have an album of the year contender!!
