Glassnote RecordsWhen Mumford & Sons announced their newest album, Wilder Mind, the band said in a statement that they were moving away from the acoustic, banjo-driven sound that made them famous. That stylistic change was inspired in part by The National's Aaron Dessner.
"We met Aaron touring around, just on the circuit," keyboardist Ben Lovett tells NME. "We've been huge fans of The National for ages. All of us, individually have got a very personal attachment to their music. We ended up being complete super fans. After meeting Aaron said: 'Come to my garage in Brooklyn and we'll make some music'. It was quite innocent really."
Mumford & Sons wrote a number of the Wilder Mind tracks in Dessner's Brooklyn studio before taking them back to London to producer James Ford. Ford has previously worked with Arctic Monkeys, HAIM and Florence + the Machine.
"We got to a point where we had an idea of what the record was going to be," Lovett says. "We had an identity. Some of the songs suddenly felt like they had to be on the record, instead of just being songs that we liked. It's quite a spectrum of different sounds and songwriting styles."
Wilder Mind, Mumford & Sons' third album, will be released on May 4.
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