How tall are mumford and sons

The singer stresses he "loves the songs" despite any imperfections in the recording. People enjoyed them and that's fine And some people didn't and that's also fine. Not having the option to change and revise because otherwise I think we'd always be going back. Less than two weeks after we meet, the band commit to a new single - Guiding Light, which premiered on Annie Mac's Radio 1 show on Thursday night.

It's classic Mumford - full of searching harmonies, stridently strummed guitars and a floorboard-threatening crescendo. Like many of the new songs, it offers solace in a crisis, with repeated imagery of a transition from darkness into light. Mumford doesn't address it directly, but it's likely he's referencing the Grenfell disaster, which claimed 72 lives last June. He witnessed the tower block being consumed by flames from the window of his London flat and immediately committed himself to the relief effort.

The singer spent weeks with survivors and their families, listening to their stories and lobbying MPs to correct what he called the "shambolic" response. He's since established a free summer football programme for the young children of Grenfell, and continues to support the community. The rest of the band have also been touched by what one song describes as "the world and its curse" in the last year.

A sense of maturity pervades the new music, too, as the band incorporate new sounds and textures without the reactionary "bin the banjos" mentality of their previous record, Wilder Mind.

Marshall may have "fallen in love" with Guiding Light the first time he heard it - but Mumford struggled for months to wrestle the song into shape. So there's a kind of disco groove underneath the chorus - and trying to pair that with a banjo was a nightmare. That even includes their biggest hit, the Grammy-nominated I Will Wait. I can't do it again! I think we rise to conflict… to a bit of a challenge.

Not everyone will necessarily feature on the album but the "pick up and go" atmosphere stopped the studio from feeling "like a chemical laboratory," says Lovett. People are awesome. That just didn't happen.

But for now, they're politely kicking the BBC out and getting back to work,. Lovett heads to the vocal booth to record some harmonies; Mumford compares mixes with recording engineer Riley MacIntyre; and Dwane stretches out on the sofa, reading a novel.

There'll be more marker pen on the whiteboard by the end of the day - but one thing is set in stone: The album title. So that ties thematically into a lot of the lyrics - that transitional thing of facing up to life. Guiding Light is out now. Delta will be released on 16 November. If you have a story suggestion email entertainment. Nothing fucking authentic about that, right? But actually there is. He loves it. It's what he's good at. It's not like he's saying he's from the Delta.

It's not like we're saying anything like that. He changed his name. And modelled himself on Woody Guthrie. And lied to everyone about who he was.

Mumford is outfitted today like his hero, the worn dark suit ideally Dylan, so too the black hat deep-positioned on his head. Backstage at the Hollywood Bowl this hat will get a compliment from a bystander and Mumford will explain that its appearance is the result of many weeks campaigning. His wife, the actor Carey Mulligan , took some persuading on it Mumford and Mulligan married in April, and she is here at the venue today, merrily flitting about the wings, wearing a jumper with a large letter M on it.

Mumford is wary about his private life, and prefers not to speak on the record about Mulligan. I relate the following story as to how the couple got together from other reports. They knew each other as kids and were briefly pen pals before falling out of touch. Then in the actor Jake Gyllenhaal , a mutual friend, reintroduced them and within a year they were engaged. At their wedding in the spring Mumford's father, a vicar, conducted the service.

Marshall and Dwane tell me they were approached by a fan, not so long ago, who wanted to know if this was how they defined themselves. We, er, we have a full spectrum of beliefs. He appends another story about a different encounter, six months ago, when he was asked by a fan if they could pray together.

Marshall recalls his awkward refusal: "Erm. Sorry dude. They're one of those bands who pinch bits out of books to texture their songs — from the Bible and from elsewhere, their first album launching with a quote from Much Ado About Nothing, for example, and the newer record featuring a borrowed line from Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall.

They're charged with posh-lad pretentiousness as a result, though I don't know it's all that uncommon for bands to plunder snatches of lyrics from wider culture. Before meeting the band I asked Mantel about the steal from Wolf Hall Mumford having admitted to it in a BBC radio interview and the novelist told me: "Of course they're welcome.

I have millions of lines. As for the biblical stuff: "I don't know many artists who've managed to go a career without bringing these things up," says Dwane. Or that the band's ploy might be to "get a following and then reveal the great truth later" the Daily Mirror, If the band are working to a secret evangelical agenda then Marshall, at least, has got his doctrines confused.

Today he hands me a leaflet he has picked up that advertises access to "the wisdom of the universe". Interview bands who have made it big and you get to sense which are only good at containing monstrous self-love, or appalling self-doubt, or a fizzing mixture of the two, for the exact duration of a promotional commitment and sometimes a shorter period than that.

You also get an idea as to which have kept their humour and some hold on normality. The irreverent Marshall is described by Lovett, accurately, as "always looking like he's won a competition to stand next to the band".

Mumford tells a story about someone squealing in recognition, not long ago, while he was waiting in line at a cash machine. His hand automatically went for the autograph pen … In fact he was being told he looked exactly like Alec Baldwin.

There is a striking resemblance. They're funny with me and generous with their time and, who knows, it might be because way back it was a press interview that accidentally got Mumford's songwriting career underway. He was about 20 at the time and a dropout from Edinburgh University "not very popular" there when he got session work as a drummer with Laura Marling.

She was then a little known singer-songwriter whose career was about to take off, and in a small London studio Mumford recorded the drum track for Marling's breakthrough album, Alas I Cannot Swim. When Marling was called away to do interviews that day, Mumford was left in a studio booth for an hour and a half, where he sat and wrote White Blank Page , later a central track on Sigh No More and a real heart-wringer, all about romantic frustration.

Throughout our conversation, Mumford talks of Marling only as an admired fellow musician — but anyone who follows these sorts of artists knows that Mumford and Marling became a couple for a time, from some point after Alas I Cannot Swim was finished until about He speaks fondly of their shared musical beginnings. Have you seen Force 10 From Navarone? I was like the bomb expert, Miller, had my little box of tricks — [drum]sticks, a mandolin. We used an accordion case as a kick-drum, made snares out of paper stuck on tables.

Laura would never say anything on stage so I'd do all the chatting. That got my stage banter sharpened. Mumford approached Marling's manager, Adam Tudhope, with White Blank Page and a few other tracks he had written, and Tudhope took him on. The band gathered around Mumford from there. Lovett was an old friend from King's College school in Wimbledon, Marshall he had first met as a teenager then reencountered in Edinburgh; Dwane they all knew through crossover work with Marling.

But we were energetic, and ambitious, and gave everything we could, and that got us a long way.