Marcus Mumford found "plenty of content" to include in his band's upcoming album.
The 28-year-old musician formed Mumford & Sons in 2007 and the group went on hiatus in 2013 only to reunite three months later to work on their third record Wilder Mind, due out in May.
Yesterday the group - also formed of Ben Lovett, Winston Marshall and Ted Dwane - unveiled new single Believe, giving fans a hint of their new electric vibe. Along with mixing up their recognisable folk sound, their new lyrics appear to be lot more heartfelt than before, with Marcus explaining how that came about.
"We're drawing off of four people's experiences over probably a year-long period, you know? So there was plenty of content and stuff to write songs about," he replied to Rolling Stone when asked if it was a painful time for certain members of the band while recording their forthcoming tracks.
"Everyone was writing what we thought were great lyrics. We've always said that it's a competition between songs rather than writers, so it's like, whoever writes it, if it's a good song, it's in. And so the boys kept coming up with a bunch of amazing lyrics that I found really fun to sing, and that was quite a liberating experience too – really enjoying, relishing singing someone else's lyrics."
The guys find it a lot easier to empathise with one another now and are so close that there's no need to ask what certain lines mean.
It was following their break that the group left behind some of their acoustic instruments and picked up electrics instead. If anything it felt "natural" for them to move into a new direction rather than a departure.
"It sounds kind of like a jolt or something, but for us it was just where we were headed," Marcus shrugged. "We were never too heavily wedded to a certain type of instrument. It was more like a certain type of songwriting, but even that has changed a bit."
