Nearly three weeks ago, Marcus Mumford revealed the first song from his forthcoming solo album during an emotional performance of “How” with Brandi Carlile at Carlile’s Greek Theater Show on June 25 in Los Angeles. Now he’s providing more details.
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In a handwritten note posted on the Mumford & Sons leader’s Instagram account on Tuesday (July 12), Mumford wrote, “In January 2021, facing demons I danced with for a long time in isolation, I wrote a song called ‘Cannibal.’ I took it to my friend Blake Mills, and we began the process of making this album, dear to my heart, called (self-titled). It comes out September 16, 2022, produced by Blake Mills, and featuring Brandi Carlile, Phoebe Bridgers, Clairo & Monica Martin.”
Mumford released the video for the lead-off track, “Cannibal,” on July 14. The haunting song hints at a previous horrible trauma or abuse in his life as he sings “That wasn’t a choice in the mind of a child and you knew it/
You took the first slice of me and you ate it raw.”
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Carlile reposted his note on Facebook, adding, “This is something so special and so important that I want everyone who visits me here to understand the effect it has had on me. Marcus Mumford is brave and soulful and everything you hope he’d be…but this music will do more for people who are hurting than any one man can claim responsibility for. I’m so proud of him. And so proud to have been a part of this transcendence. Get ready.”
At the Greek Theater show, Mumford credited Carlile, whom he said he became friends with “quite a long time ago,” with not only singing the duet with him, but offering her full support. “As I was in the process of making a record — with the full blessing and permission of the band that I’m still in — [Carlile] heard a couple of songs and put her arm around me and said, ‘I’m gonna help you do whatever it is you need to do to finish this,” Variety previously reported. “It was the most extraordinary support I’ve ever had from another musician other than my bandmates. And so, we went into the studio the next day and wrote and recorded this song, which is the last song on the record.”
Though this is his first full solo album, Mumford has released other solo works, including the Emmy-nominated theme to the Apple + series Ted Lasso.
Capitol Records will release the set. Mumford & Sons last album, 2018’s Delta, came out through Gentleman of the Road/Glassnote in the U.S. In June 2021, guitarist Winston Marshall quit the group following a controversy over his March tweet in support of American right-wing journalist Andy Ngo’s book Unmasked: Inside Antifa’s Radical Plan to Destroy Democracy.