‘We got a couple of tunes … [but] they need work,’ band says of writing new material while on the road in support of Babel.

_{From MTV.com
By James Montgomery (@positivnegativ), with reporting by Chris Kim}

Mumford & Sons may still be living in a “constant state of surprise” over the continued success of their Babel album, but that doesn’t mean they’re not already thinking about the follow-up.

Yes, much like the two-year process that birthed Babel, Mumford have begun using their time on the road to work on brand-new songs, a process that’s admittedly pretty slow, but is beginning to bear fruit.

“We’re changing it up; we’ve spent a couple of years really hitting it hard, and we’ve come to a point where we’re like ‘We’ve really got to spend more time rehearsing.’ And we did that a couple days ago, and it was great,” Winston Marshall told MTV News. “We got a couple of tunes out of it, they need work, but, it’s quite a difficult thing when you start touring; you play a lot less music than when you’re in your bedroom alone. So we’re trying to battle against that. We want to set up a little music room; because we’re playing bigger rooms [now], there’s bigger space backstage for that kind of stuff. We’re trying to work it out; we want to do more.”

And, on their seemingly endless stretch of shows (they’re currently booked until April), Mumford & Sons will continue to work on new material, perhaps even working a few sketches of songs into their set. It’s the way they’ve always operated, and they see no reason to mess with that formula.

“Songs live get a bit more aggressive; a bit more, you project them harder, they get quicker, and then, in reaction to that, other songs get a bit slower and a bit more contemplative and a bit gentler, because you’re trying to balance out that adrenaline-fueled aggression,” Marcus Mumford said. “It’s how the songs take shape. Like ‘White Blank Page’ has progressively gotten faster as we’ve played it live, and a new song like ‘Ghosts That We Knew’ has slowed down; we’re milking it.”

And though they’re adamant that Babel’s success hasn’t changed them, Mumford will admit that as they press on — and continue to work — they have been forced to alter their daily routine … albeit just slightly.

“It’s cool shifting our priorities on the road, from like, the top priorities obviously being Ping-Pong, and then eating, and then drinking, and then seeing people, and then the show, and then maybe rehearsing after that,” Mumford laughed. “Our priorities are constantly shifting; you ask if we’ve changed as a band, we have probably, in that way.”

“Yeah,” Marshall deadpanned. “Now rehearsing is nearly as important as a gig.”

‘We weren’t expecting people [to buy the album],’ Marcus Mumford tells MTV News about huge-selling second album.
By James Montgomery (@positivnegativ) 
From MTV.com: 

Mumford & Sons‘ Babel is the year’s best-selling rock album (by a mile), posted the second-largest debut of 2012 (it would have been the biggest, if it not for that pesky Taylor Swift) and, in less than two months, has already sold more copies than Justin Bieber’s Believe, Carrie Underwood’s Blown Away and Nicki Minaj’s Roman Reloaded.

Those are the facts — even if the guys in Mumford can’t believe any of them are actually real.

“We spend our lives in a constant state of surprise at the moment, definitely. We weren’t expecting people to [buy the album],” Marcus Mumford told MTV News “Especially people who had heard the songs already. You could pretty much listen to the whole album on YouTube, just in a different order to the one we put down. Most of the songs were already online … because we just liked playing them live.”

So yes, for a band that spent nearly all of the past two years working on Babel — in-between a seemingly endless string of tour dates, that is — all of that success has been slightly mind-blowing. But they remain incredibly grounded when it comes to discussing their sales — mostly because they don’t think there’s anything all that remarkable about them in the first place.

“The music industry has to talk about something, and I think they’re trying to make something out of nothing,” Mumford sighed. “People have always been buying albums; people have always been supporting different types of music, sometimes some type of music will become more mainstream than it was a couple of years ago, and that’s fine, and then it will go out, you know?

“I don’t think there’s any major groundbreaking thing going on now,” he continued. “I just think the main thing is that people buy tickets to shows; people love seeing live shows, and that’s lucky for us, because that’s what we love doing most. More so than albums or radio shows or whatever, we love playing gigs, and that’s what it’s all about for us.”

And true to those words, Mumford will spend the foreseeable future on the road (their current tour schedule stretches all the way to April), which is about the only way they know how to stay grounded. And despite what you may have read about them being music-industry saviors, not surprisingly, they don’t see themselves that way. In fact, to them, not much — if anything — has changed, including their live show.

“We’ve been touring constantly for five years, and the only thing that’s obvious is that the gigs are f—-ing massive now,” Winston Marshall laughed. “Like, playing the Hollywood Bowl is ridiculous. You can’t even fathom the faces of the people at the back. But we’ve got the same crew, same bunch of people, same musicians. We’re pretty lucky in that sense. We’re quite tight and pretty happy. … Basically, we’ve been playing the same set for five years now!”

Mumford & Sons fans, remember this post asking for YOU to contact MTV? Well, here is the final product! This is the Team Mumford & Sons Fan Army Manifesto in which you (including some followers of Mumford & Sons Blog!) explain why you love Mumford & Sons for the upcoming O Music Awards!

Marcus Mumford & Winston Marshall are interviewed by MTV about the “work” they’re doing on their second album.  According to Marcus, “The fact that we call it ‘work’ is a bit pretentious. It’s not work, really. It’s just playing music with your mates. It’s really fun,” despite the fact that Winston is wearing leather!