Music

MARVIN x Of Monsters and Men: On a new album, the Icelandic five-piece fight modern malaise with fantastical optimism.

All Is Love And Pain In The Mouse Parade, Of Monsters And Men’s gorgeous fourth album, takes its name from a fictional rodent celebration that comes to life via an achingly gorgeous track that’s part twee fantasy, part cutting reality. “It’s about this community of mice that are reciting their history that’s full of love and pain, but they’re all singing together,” explains co-vocalist Nanna Bryndís Hilmarsdóttir. “There’s this feeling of ‘us’ as opposed to ‘I’.” It’s very Of Monsters And Men.

The band, originally a Nanna solo project that quickly grew into a thundering six-piece folk-rock giant, never thought their career would stretch beyond playing local shows in their home country of Iceland like so many of their peers. Then the euphoric “Little Talk” became a breakout hit across the world in 2011. The band quickly headed out on a global headline run in support of their joyful debut album My Head Is An Animal, which was recorded in a single weekend, and embraced their strange new world with a childlike excitement. “It was this whirlwind,” Nanna admits. “Everything that followed was really cool but it was not something we were expecting.” Luckily the band had each other to keep them grounded, while regular trips to friends and family back home in Iceland made sure they didn’t lose touch with reality.

Read the full feature in MARVIN Issue 18. Click HERE to purchase.