Mumford & Sons speak to entertainment.ie about their much anticipated second album

Mumford & Sons were in town yesterday to promote their upcoming Gentleman of the Road Stopover show in Salthill Park, Galway on June 9th. The gig is entirely curated by the band themselves, with two stages of musical acts personally selected by Marcus Mumford and co., a move which the band hopes will remove the middle man from the equation and bring a gig directly from the band to fans and the local community.

We managed to grab a few minutes with Marcus Mumford and Ben Lovett when they were in town yesterday to find out the latest news on their much-anticipated second album and the entire 10 minute conversation was recorded for a Podcast for you listening pleasure.

"We would love to get [the album] out tomorrow but we want to get it out definitely by the end of the year", said Marcus. "We don't want to set a date until it's finished. We're feeling good about it. We're getting to the point that we're confident that it's going to sum us up quite well for where we're at now."

Touring necessities have dictated that the majority of the second Mumford & Sons album was written while on the road. But how does writing a song while on tour impact the song that eventually ends up getting written? Is it different writing a song in Edinburgh University (where a lot of the band's first album Sigh No More was written) compared to the inside of tour bus?

"That's a good question, but we're probably the worst people to ask because we're so close to it. Our perspective on it is not objective", continued Mumford.

Lovett chimed in: "We had moments in the touring where we had a bit of respite. It was a very busy couple of years but we also did manage to take a bit of time off to do some writing. Not so much together, which really started happening last year when we really started to get our teeth into the songs. Up until that point we'd been playing some songs live, so there are some songs that people might assume are on the record - and they might be right - but there are some that we've played and we felt weren't really working for us and they won't make it on."

The band have been playing a new song called 'Ghosts The We Knew' in live sets recently but Lovett gave no indication as to whether this will make it on the finished record.

"It's all new to us. We didn't really know a process to go into after the first record. We've learned quite a lot from making this one and we'll take those lessons with us into the next process for sure", he said.

The Vaccines, The Correspondents, Will Mason, Zulu Winter, Nathaniel Rateliff and Moulettes will also appear with Mumford & Sons at Salthill Park on June 9th. Tickets are priced at €45 plus service fees.