Mumford And Sons Announce Live Return

After more than a year out of the game, Mumford & Sons have announced their long-awaited live return. They’ve chosen to stage their comeback in the US, where they’ll be playing the Bonnaroo festival in Manchester, Tennessee in June.

Marcus Mumford and his merry band will appear at the festival, held on June 11-14, alongside Billy Joel, Kendrick Lamar, Run The Jewels, Royal Blood and Florence & The Machine. The four-piece were booked to play the festival back in 2013, but had to pull out due to their bassist Ted Dwane needing to recover from emergency brain surgery.

The British folk-pop group have gone quiet since wrapping up their American tour of 2013, thus bringing the promotional cycle for 2012’s Babel to a close. The album saw them break through on the side of the Atlantic, having conquered their homeland a couple of years earlier with the slow-burning success of 2009’s debut Sigh No More.

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At the time, keyboardist Ben Lovett told Rolling Stone magazine: “We just know we’re going to take a considerable amount of time off and just go back to hanging out and having no commitments or pressure or anything like that.”

Back in October last year, it was revealed that they had entered the studio with Arctic Monkeys and Haim producer James Ford to begin work on their third album. The release date for the completed record was tentatively announced for early 2015, though no further details have been revealed on that front.

Rumours had spread in some quarters that Mumford & Sons were splitting up due to the pressure of touring, but the booking of such a big appointment should surely dispel those. Banjo player Winston Marshall had said in an interview in March 2014: “I wish I had something to say about Mumford & Sons. It was a good time. It's over.”

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