“Mumford & Sons’ uplifting return is missing the energy of Winston Marshall,” runs the headline on the Daily Telegraph’s website today on a review of the middle-of-the-road strummers’ latest album.
“We don’t need to rehash the bizarre saga of how Marshall effectively kicked himself out of the band in 2021 to become a conservative political podcaster, but they clearly miss his energy and musicianship on stage,” chief music critic Neil McCormick told Telegraph readers, the last record most of whom bought was by Pat Boone.
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“He was often their lead player, weaving through their barrelhouse sound and binding it all together, and now they are reliant on six backing musicians to fill that space,” he mourned. “Musically, it works fine, but the potent sense of togetherness that Mumford & Sons represented has been weakened.”
Marshall packed up his banjo and left the band in 2021 so he could “speak freely” about political issues having faced criticism for some of his views. He now hosts The Winston Marshall Show podcast where he interviews luminaries across the political spectrum from the right to the very right, including Allison Pearson, Ann Coulter, Zia Yusuf and Matthew Goodwin.
Still, the praise of his barrelhouse sound-weaving wouldn’t go amiss were the Daily Mail’s bid to buy the Telegraph to collapse, opening it up to another bout of interest in the titles from GB News owner Paul Marshall. Or, as Winston calls him, Dad.
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