Mumford & Sons seems rather new to the world of arena showmanship, but tell that to the 9,395 fans who cheered on the young Englishmen on Thursday night at North Little Rock's Verizon Arena.
It was one of the finer shows in the Verizon Arena scrapbook of great concerts.
Marcus Mumford is the lead singer and sometime guitarist or drummer, who is ably backed by Winston Marshall on electric guitar and banjo, Ben Lovett on keyboards and Ted Dwane on bass. Augmenting the core of the band at various times: four more musicians on fiddle, drums, trumpet and trombone.
Though some fans had suggested the band had gone "rock 'n' roll" on its latest album, abandoning the acoustic Americana that had filled the first two, the band showed that it can do just fine by mixing things up.
The show featured songs from all three of the band's releases, with an emphasis on the latest, Wilder Mind. Highlights were the title cut of that album, plus "I Will Wait," "Ditmas," "Little Lion Man" and an outstanding version of a Bruce Springsteen classic, "I'm on Fire," which began with a long prelude that recalled early Pink Floyd.
Sound and lights were outstanding, although much of Mumford's between-songs banter was lost in the roar of the fans and complicated by his English accent.
The band played just 15 minutes short of two hours, and managed to inject ingenuity. At one point they left the stage and a short time later showed up on the opposite end of the arena, where they played a couple of songs while standing as if around a campfire as if they were channeling Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young.
Mumford also plunged from the stage into the crowd and didn't just end up on the other end of the floor but continued up to the top of the arena's lower bowl -- then raced around the top and made it back to the stage, where the band played a bit of an instrumental interlude to give him time to catch his breath.
And speaking of the floor, it was packed with people, but no chairs, so that those who prefer standing got their wish for general admission booty-shaking.
Opening act Blake Mills, in his 30-minute set, demonstrated his awesome guitar talent, especially on slide guitar, enthusiastically backed by a drummer and a keyboardist who also played some bass parts. Mills and his band later accompanied Mumford & Sons on some numbers.
Metro on 04/09/2016