They’re a band that the British public love to sneer at, but they say it has long stopped bothering them. And, anyway, they have bigger fish to fry

In Mumford & Sons’ decade-long existence, the band have become synonymous with waistcoats, tweed, tweed waistcoats and, most of all, a wildly popular strain of old-timey folk and Americana. Their Christian-tinged, banjo-fuelled sound turned them into one of the biggest-selling acts of the early 2010s, winning them Grammys, stage time with Bob Dylan and gigs entertaining Barack Obama, as well as spawning plenty of imitators, from Iceland’s Of Monsters and Men to Colorado folk-rockers the Lumineers.

Yet, when the singer, Marcus Mumford, and the keyboard player, Ben Lovett, talk about their new album, Delta, the conversation is littered with references to hip-hop, synths and “chopping up beats” with the studio software Logic. Terms such as EDM and “sidechaining” are bandied about. Mumford – dressed in hipster-issue black, his arms a patchwork of tasteful tattoos – says he started every recording session by listening to the single Jasmine by the enigmatic R&B producer Jai Paul on full blast. The influence of the 80s new-wavers Talk Talk is also noted.

Surprisingly, or perhaps stubbornly, the pair consider none of this to be a departure from the Mumford & Sons brand. The signature sound was born out of necessity, they say. They wrote much of their early material on the road “with whatever we had to hand”, as Mumford puts it. “And most of the time, what we had to hand were acoustic instruments.”

Diehard fans need not panic. Much of Delta still exists comfortably within the bounds of Mumford & Sons’ usual universe – there are a fair few earnestly strummed ballads amid the synthetic grooves and spurts of 80s bombast. But it is certainly an album that sees the group continue what they started with their subtly electrified 2015 record, Wilder Mind: distancing themselves from the identity that won them armies of fervent fans and legions of equally devoted detractors.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Guiding Light.

For the fact is that Mumford & Sons belong to a select group of acts – UK-bred, hugely successful in the US – at whom the British public have made a national pastime of sneering (other notable members include Ed Sheeran and Coldplay). Interviewers tend to greet the group quoting a series of nasty things people have said about them, possibly hoping to get a rise, but the years of exposure have left the band feeling philosophical. “Anyone who says they don’t read their own press is completely bullshitting,” says Mumford. “I read something on Twitter recently that said: ‘I have it on good authority that the guys from Mumford & Sons are complete cunts.’” He chuckles, genuinely amused. “I kind of wanted to know: who’s the authority?”

If Mumford really has started viewing social-media abuse as a form of light entertainment, that is understandable. He has had far graver concerns over the past few years. In the period since Wilder Mind was released, the musician’s world has been touched by death. He watched his grandmother die, quite literally – being present as she passed away was an experience he describes as “chilling”, and one he has translated into the beautiful, tear-jerking tribute Beloved.

But Delta was also informed by his experience of disaster on a much vaster scale. Last year, Mumford witnessed the Grenfell Tower fire from his west London flat. Up at dawn with his one-year-old daughter, he looked out of the window and “thought 9/11 had happened. I saw the tower burning – I was, like: fucking hell. [I] turned on the news, and it felt like all the houses emptied, and everyone was on the street.” The initial shock turned to dismay at the government’s paltry response – a feeling heightened by the fact that Mumford had only just returned from a charity trip to Iraq. “It felt to me like there were better systems of governance in place in fucking Mosul than there were in North Kensington, part of the richest borough in Europe,” he says. “And [the officials] were nowhere to be seen. Councillors were taking off their badges and their hi-vis because people were so upset with their response.”

When we meet, Mumford has just come from a meeting of the Grenfell Foundation, the charity he helped set up at the behest of former residents and the bereaved – some of whom he now describes as his “best friends”. The local community genuinely did pull together, he says, which was perhaps the only bright spot in the aftermath of the fire. Unlike those who hailed Jeremy Corbyn’s human touch while criticising the government’s pitiful response, Mumford was not particularly impressed by any of the politicians. “I think central government, the mayor of London – everyone could have done better. We could go into the details of that, but I don’t want to because I’ll end up slagging everyone off.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The band back in 2009. Photograph: Redferns

These days, however, being diplomatic in interviews isn’t enough to ensure you escape political controversy. While recording the album, the band opened up the doors to their north London studio, welcoming musicians including the rapper Octavian and the pop singer Maggie Rogers along with about 100 other visitors. Not all of them contributed musically – one who presumably didn’t get on the mic was Jordan Peterson, the exclusively beef-eating psychologist whose condemnation of identity politics has made him a hero to the “alt-right”. In May, Peterson posted a photo of himself with Lovett and bandmates Winston Marshall and Ted Dwane at their studio. It took a couple of months for the music press to notice it, but when they did there was a small outcry – and an opportunity for wags on social media to lay into the band (“I assumed they were, ‘My dad was a vicar’ Tory, not ‘concerned about white birthrates’ Tory,” quipped one Twitter user).

Lovett is unapologetic. “I looked forward to having a conversation with him, but only because I wanted to have a conversation with as many people as possible,” he says, although he can’t remember what they actually talked about. He views the whole affair as simply an opportunity for more Mumford-bashing. “Having a swipe is a fun sport – for some reason, him having a photo with Russell Brand was not so interesting,” Lovett complains (it is true that Peterson has posted pictures with other celebrities with negligible backlash). He describes Peterson as “an intellectualist more than anything: I don’t think he particularly likes how political it is”.

A lot of people come to our shows whose views we don’t agree with Marcus Mumford

Mumford smirks back: “I think he loves it.” He, in contrast, is keen to distance himself from the controversy. “Other musicians have called me up asking for an explanation,” he says, emphasising that he was not actually present for the photo. “If people take that as an endorsement of his politics, that upsets me because I disagree with a lot of his politics.” That said, Mumford “will fiercely defend my bandmates’ rights to listen to the guy”.

In a world when even the notoriously neutral Taylor Swift is championing electoral candidates, Mumford & Sons are determined to remain apolitical as a band. “We like the idea that music can unite people, and that probably means that a lot of people come to our shows whose views we don’t agree with,” says Mumford. “But what are we going to do? Close the doors? We want as many people who want to come to a show to feel welcome. And that’s a super-liberal point of view historically – the idea of inclusivity, of bringing everyone in.”

The Peterson debacle isn’t the only storm in a teacup Mumford has had to face lately. He recently went viral after being caught on camera yawning during Prince Harry’s wedding ceremony, an event he attended with his wife, the actor Carey Mulligan, who was subsequently forced to dissect the episode on the US chatshow circuit. “I got more messages about that than any album we’ve ever put out,” sighs Mumford. Mulligan, he says, was cautious of being filmed throughout the event, unlike him. “I was like: ‘They’re not going to be fucking looking at us. Elton John’s over there, George Clooney’s over there – we’re fine. She was smarter than I was.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Marcus Mumford with Rita Ora at an event in support of the Grenfell victims. Photograph: Alamy.

However slow he is to realise it, Mumford is now half of a celebrity power couple (and one that may be about to get a lot more high-profile, with Mulligan tipped to win an Oscar for her role in Paul Dano’s Wildlife). The pair’s schedules are hectic enough that they enforce “a two-week rule”, according to Mumford, ensuring they see each other every fortnight “one way or the other”. But it is their domestic rather than public life that the musician channels into Delta. Over the last three years, Mumford and Mulligan have had two children, and being there for the births is something that profoundly affected his view of the world. “Birth and death are like the fucking wild to me,” he says. “We think we’re so in control of our lives, especially in this part of the world. But there’s an element of which you’re just not – these natural things are going to happen whether you like it or not.” The album also reflects the huge upheaval in Lovett’s life – his divorce from the fashion designer Jemima Janney, a subject he mines on the album’s second single, a maudlin and rather intense love song called If I Say.

All these experiences, says Mumford, coincided with the band spending extended periods of time at home: the result felt like a confrontation with reality that they had been avoiding for their entire adult lives. “It felt for a while as if we’d been cruising down the river-lands in various ways – especially on tour. It’s like a bubble.” Coming home felt like “moving from shelter to the wild. We decided to call the album Delta for that reason.”

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This sense of awe surfaces in tracks such as The Wild and Woman, a hypnotic pop song about the unknowability of others, whose infectious looped riff was apparently achieved by “chopping up banjos”.

Despite their claims to be moving on, Mumford & Sons still seem to be very much enamoured of their four-stringed friend: the banjo “found its way on to pretty much every song”, says Lovett, nonchalantly. “It’s a useful instrument – it’s underrated,” he adds. The group may have shrugged off their carefree youth, protective touring bubbles and tweed waistcoats, but some things, it seems, are just that little bit harder to let go.

Delta is out on Friday 16 November on Island Records. Mumford & Sons play 11 dates across the UK beginning on 18 November at the SSE Arena, Belfast.