An extended review of a 2025 music recording by Mumford & Sons
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Glassnote Music, 2025. $15 ($43 vinyl)
You wouldn’t be blamed for mistaking the chorus “You are all I want/You're all I need/I'll find peace beneath the shadow of your wings” for a Vineyard worship song rather than a single from a band that has sold out stadiums across Canada and had #1-charting albums. This chorus from the opening track “Malibu” sets the tone for Rushmere, the fifth studio album from Mumford & Sons. It’s their first album in seven years and first without banjo player Winston Marshall.
On this album the British folk-rock band returns to a more stripped-down, acoustic sound after experimenting with alternative rock and atmospheric pop on their previous two records. A couple of songs (“Malibu,” “Surrender”) begin with tempered acoustic guitar and/or piano only to reach an arena-tour worthy crescendo, complete with a horn section.
Fans of their earlier albums will be pleased to hear some banjo (especially on “Rushmere”) and discover songs (“Caroline,” “Truth”) with their typical four-on-the-floor beat. Most of the tracks (“Monochrome,” “Where It Belongs,” “Anchor,” “Blood on the Page,” “Carry on”) however, are acoustic through and through, with rich layered harmonies creating an intimate soundscape.
Mumford & Sons’ lyrics are known to be deeply influenced by biblical language, as with those of Bob Dylan, U2 and the Killers. On “Truth,” lead singer Marcus Mumford declares, “I was born to believe the truth is all there is.” It’s no secret that Mumford and his brother James – an Oxford-trained Christian philosopher – are the sons of Eleanor and John Mumford, international leaders of the neo-charismatic Vineyard churches. Another line, “I was born in California,” refers to when the Mumfords worked at Vineyard founder John Wimber’s Anaheim church before bringing the Vineyard movement to the U.K. Once you recognize it, the Christian influence in the band’s songwriting is impossible to ignore.
Previous albums have featured lines like “Awake my soul, for you were made to meet your maker;” “I was told by Jesus all was well;” “the shame that sent me off from the God that I once loved” and several other explicit references to God, grace, truth, the devil, sin, the Lord, the fear of God and themes you’d expect to hear in a Dove Award-winning band, not a Grammy-winning one.
In a 2020 Rolling Stone interview, Marcus Mumford was asked about the Bible’s influence on his songwriting. He responded, “There’s some great language in [the Bible], it’s quite helpful and [has] some great poetry as well, and I’ve never been shy of nicking ideas.”
Rushmere continues to nick from the language of Scripture. Alongside the clear allusion to the Psalms in “Malibu,” there’s a line in “Monochrome” that says, “There is Christ in the ground beneath your feet/restoration and the rewritten code.” Given their theological awareness, part of me wonders if a line from “Where It Belongs” that goes “let your anger go to hell/where it belongs” is a metaphysical statement rather than a flippant one.
Like the chorus of “Malibu,” the chorus of “Surrender” could fit in a Sunday morning worship service as much as a Friday night concert: “Break me down and put me back together/I surrender/I surrender now/And hold me in the promise of forever.”
So, are Mumford & Sons embracing the Christian faith? To borrow Mumford’s answer to a similar interview question in 2011: “It’s not as simple as that.” In 2025, the band’s lyrics continue to express the complex feelings they have toward the faith. In “Carry on,” Mumford sings, “If this is what it’s like to be unholy/if this is what it’s like to be lost/I will take this heresy over your hypocrisy/and count any cost.” Rejecting “you and all your original sin,” Mumford theologizes, “there’s no evil in a child’s eyes.” The song concludes, “It was made and it was good,” seemingly echoing the creation story in Genesis.
Within Rushmere we don’t find a straightforward declaration of faith, but rather the wrestling of someone so shaped by Christian ideas and biblical language that when they reach for a metaphor, something scriptural inevitably comes out.
In that same Rolling Stone 2020 interview, Mumford said, “I like the idea that people can interpret [a] song however they like.” With that in mind, those of us familiar with the Gospels and a bit of Mumford’s life might see Jesus’ story of the prodigal son in the final lines of “Malibu.”
“But walking through the valley was what brought me here/I knew I would never make it on my own/And I don't know how it took so long to shed this skin/Live under the shadow of your wings.”
Christian folk music fans can rest assured that only God holds the final interpretation of human hearts and the songs they create. Rushmere gives us much to celebrate, ponder and perhaps even pray with. At just 35 minutes, the album is well worth a listen.
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