Of Monsters and Men – Little Talks
Mumford and his sons may be having some down time, but as if to prove we’re far from done with that new-folk revival sound, Icelandic six-piece Of Monsters And Men have provided one of the biggest songs of the year so far with single ‘Little Talks’. It’s more on the romping edge of new-folk, with a glorious brass-driven chorus that will surely be getting heels lifting and skirts flinging around at barn dances across the globe.
The song is accompanied by a visually rich and pretty awesome video directed by Mihai Wilson of We Were Monkeys. It’s a swashbuckling fantasy, sprinkled with snowflakes, sorcery, and CGI.
There are, as well, the obligatory remixes to accompany and support the single. Ones to note are Passion Pit’s version (which gives the original a seriously minimal, electronic dancefloor edge with synth stabs and heavily arpeggiated rhythms. It’s a version that’s endorsed by Monsters and Men, as singer Nanna Bryndís Hilmarsdóttir told Rolling Stone: “We love it. It’s more clubby and it’s very cool. It’s a hard song to remix, too, because it has a certain structure. So I think they did a very good job.”
The band will be spending the rest of 2012 on the road, and are nothing but surprised by their fame. “When we were making this album we weren’t thinking about even going out of Iceland to tour or anything like that,” Hilmarsdóttir says. “It seemed like a very, very distant idea, and it is a distant idea for a young Icelandic band. We made this album with just little money and plans to raise money where we could. It wasn’t planned at all, but it happened and it’s very weird. But it’s wonderful.”
Although the band will be touring, they’ve already started working on their second album, says Hilmarsdóttir, will be influenced by their current success and spending time on the road. “I think traveling as much as we’ve been doing lately has been very good for us, because there are a lot of ideas coming. It’s a combination of all of it – going around and meeting different people and seeing buildings and landscapes and all this stuff. It does something to you and makes you think in a different way.”
