I've always thought of faith as an acknowledgment of not being the biggest thing in the universe.
None of us had really any interest in doing a sort of 'Babel 2.'
We never could have foreseen the success of 'Babel.' It's not like banjo records were soaring up the charts, you know.
I think it's a great story, the story of Babel. I think anyone can direct it as an analogy for a lot of different situations.
As humans, we're such a discontented species. We're always trying to further ourselves, and you get all the way to the moon, and then it's just discontent. You want to go to Mars.
In December 2010, we embarked on a slightly strange tour of India. We played every kind of gig you could imagine over two weeks, from sports bars to hotel bars to a beautiful outdoor amphitheatre.
We started off as Marcus Mumford, which is our singer's name. But then it very quickly became apparent it wasn't really a one-man thing: it was indeed a band. We wanted to give the impression of a family business, and we just liked the ring of Mumford & Sons.
If you told me in the '90s that I'd be in a chart battle with Green Day, I probably would have just laughed at you.
You look at the instrumentation, and you can't really argue that we set out with commercial aspirations. Banjos and things like that are not part of some formula for global success. But it felt right, and I think there's some value to purity of intention.
It's strange to think about the scathing reviews 'Sigh No More' got and then consider that we could win best album a year or so later.
When we made the first album, it was meant to be a snapshot of Mumford & Sons in 2009.
We always try to make each record a snapshot of the band at that time.
A lot of the time, if you go into an arena, they're pretty uninspiring. But we try to create an atmosphere.
