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After a 13-year run that began in 2009 with the LP “Sigh No More,” Marcus Mumford is breaking away from Mumford & Sons — without breaking up.
Mumford, the frontman of Mumford & Sons who covers lead vocals, electric guitar, acoustic guitar, and drums for the band, just released his first solo album and is performing in Boston this November.
The LP, called “(self-titled),” is Mumford’s first departure from Mumford & Sons, but he is very much still in the band. Rumors swirled after the announcement of the album that it meant the band was breaking up, especially since it came almost exactly a year after Winston Marshall left the band, but those were quelled by Mumford.
“I can still taste you and I hate it / That wasn’t a choice in the mind of a child and you knew it,” are the first lines of the album, one that pulls you down but then pushes you back up, as Mumford explores reckoning with his childhood trauma and with alcoholism and how to move forward from it, finding at least some peace by the end of the album.
“(self-titled)” is raw, vulnerable, and intense, but also uplifting and inspiring. The first track, called “Cannibal,” which begins with those haunting lyrics, reveals Mumford was sexually abused as a child, and the second, “Grace” is about telling his mother for the first time during the pandemic lockdown.
In a GQ interview from August 2022, Mumford discussed his sexual abuse and shared he hadn’t told anyone about it for 30 years, even forgetting that his mother didn’t know when he played her “Cannibal” for the first time. He started going to trauma therapy in the summer of 2019 after an intervention. He talked about what happened to him for the first time and began learning how to heal the ways it has impacted his life since.
“The last three years has just been trying to look at that and correct some balance,” Mumford said to GQ.
He worked with producer Blake Mills — responsible for Jack Johnson’s “Meet the Moonlight,” John Legend’s “Darkness & Light,” and Alabama Shakes’ “Sound & Color,” among others — and has songs featuring Phoebe Bridgers, Brandi Carlile, and Clairo on the album, which came out Sept. 16. He’s heading on a tour that includes Denver, Los Angeles, Phoenix, Houston, and Chicago, and brings him to Boston on Nov. 8 at the Wang Theatre.
Though Mumford will continue making music with Mumford & Sons, “(self-titled)” definitely represents a kind of new beginning for Mumford. And it’s a good one.
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