The Melbourne music scene is sort of terrifying. It seems like everyone is always in an aestheticized competition to see who can enjoy performances in the most chill and natural fashion, embodied by slow, rhythmic nodding peppered throughout crowds. For this reason, I was enamoured by the concept of seeing twee-folk gods and purveyors of unadulterated sincerity, Mumford and Sons, live in concert. I thought that there was no possible reason any musical imposter syndrome could interfere with my night this time around.

Boy, was I wrong. 

The start of the evening was something I might describe as my personal hell. Walking from Flinders Street Station towards Rod Laver Arena like a little fish in a big pond of scary footy enjoyers angling towards the MCG and a smaller, albeit just as recognisable set of more sincere Mumford and Sons enjoyers than I. After throwing the box office staff for a loop when trying to claim my reviews tickets as a consequence of a seccy directing me towards Margaret Court’s ticket desk instead of Rod Laver’s—sorry Nicole!—I finally made it through the high-security operation going down at the Arena.

During the ticket palaver also emerged a peculiar trend of the evening, it sort of seemed like all the Mumford and Sons fans were a bit mad all the time. Everyone in the ticket line was incredibly grouchy and kept looking towards my friend and I in a isn’t-this-probably-quite-standard-ticketing-issue-I’m-encountering-ridiculous sort of fashion. I then proceeded to run into an ex fling that I thought I was on much better terms with than the interaction suggested. During the show itself, I bore witness to three separate squabbles breaking out in the seats, all a consequence of older concertgoers not enjoying younger patrons being too loud/standing up/doing anything really. 

The demographics of the night were certainly peculiar—impossible to boil down to any one age or gender—which is both a testament to the universality of the band’s music and perhaps also reason why their performance didn’t quite stick in the way they wanted it to. 

Having now spent the bulk of this word count speaking on interpersonal grievances and my own organisational incompetence, I think it’s finally time to turn to the music itself. 

The first opener, Hudson Freeman, was a sort of pastiche of the typical American woodland folk artist. His songs, while pleasant on the ears, were not at all distinguishable from acts similar to him, save his most popular track, “If You Know Me”, which did point in a promising artistic direction for the acoustic guitar-wielding droner. To Freeman’s credit, his mellow energy did serve to dissipate all the nerves of the disasters that preceded reaching my seat, priming me for the rest of the evening.

After Freeman came what was, for me, the evening’s headline act—Melbourne based indie-folk act Folk Bitch Trio. Having not missed any of their Melburnian performances over the last six months, the group didn’t necessarily offer up anything different during their arena debut at Rod Laver, but it felt incredible right seeing them on a stage that matched the scale and necessity of their talent. They ran through a barrage of their greatest hits in a 30 minute-ish set and I was constantly internally scowling at those around me who were talking over their glorious harmonies. The group is about to kick off a North American headline tour and it was a wonderful time seeing them once again before they hit the road stateside. 

Following much anticipation, Mumford and Sons finally hit the stage. Their performance was, to an extent, undeniable in its infectious energy and lavish instrumentation. Marcus Mumford himself is a showman through and through, I was at times questioning if his performance was lip synced due to his consistency and sheer vocal quality. The frontman was doing things with an acoustic guitar that I never previously thought possible, and the audience were hanging off his every silkily sung lyric. At one point, Mumford leapt off stage and into the audience, doing a lap of the entire arena in the blink of an eye, giving everyone in the building a closer glimpse of his star power. His theatricality and onstage bravado were perhaps the highlights of the evening, it was just a souring eventuation that he didn’t exactly have a setlist that was able to match his energy. 

As a freshman enjoyer of Mumford and Sons since the release of their 2026 album Prizefighter, I was enamoured by the setlist’s focus on deep cuts from the project, but these numbers certainly did not capture the hearts and minds of the average fan. There was a noticeable shift in crowd energy between high-octane throwbacks like “Little Lion Man” and new, contemplative songs such as “Badlands” or “Icarus”. There was also a 45-minute stretch in the middle of the concert where Mumford sung through a series of his less popular older work that really blended into one another in a fashion that thoroughly disengaged me from the concert playing out before my eyes. Mumford pulled it all together at the end, however, performing some touching acoustic numbers on a B-stage right in front of my seats, and returning to the mainstage for a spine-tingling and wonderfully sincere performance of hit, “The Cave”, to close out the night. 

When Mumford fully leant into his twee-folk sensibilities, it felt like everything that had set the crowd apart or disengaged them from the night was tossed to the side, and something really harmonious emerged from the banjo-filled air. A Mumford and Sons concert isn’t going to change your life, but it might just let you tap into the latent millennial within all of us and help you throw away the self-obsessiveness and egotism of your regular old social life.