Ignition Music Magazine Blog: Interview with Of Monsters and Men

Ignition caught up with bassist Kristján Páll Kristjánsson before the band set off to play the first of two nights in New York City to discuss their tour, Christmastime and surprising places to get amazing pizza.

BY KRISTIN CHAMBERS Photos by Dan Florez
Issue #22

A unique blend of Icelandic talent, Of Monsters and Men has taken the world by storm with their popular hit “Little Talks.” Following their 2012 release of My Head is an Animal, the six-piece crew has sold out nearly every venue on their U.S. tour, with planned stops in Japan, Australia and Europe beginning in January.
With a unique assortment of instruments that includes everything from accordion to glockenspiel, the band has been compared to the likes of Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros, Mumford and Sons and Arcade Fire, but has made mainstream waves with their unique indie pop-folk sound and catchy daydream encompassing melodies derived from ancient Icelandic tales.
Birthed from Nanna Bryndís Hilmarsdóttir’s solo project Songbird in 2009, it is easy to see where Of Monsters and Men strode into success. Incorporating group vocals with lead singers Ragnar Þórhallsson (better known as Raggie) and Nanna, a lovely mix of warmth combines with forklore in their songs.

How’s the tour going?
It’s been going very good, been playing awesome shows and everyone’s been happy. Nothing really interesting, we’ve been just doing the band usual stuff and playing acoustic sessions, and playing the shows of course.

Kristján Páll Kristjánsson

Tell me a little bit about the concept behind My Head is an Animal.
Well we just wanted it to be a really big something was the idea at first. So we went into the biggest recording studio in Iceland, a really big hall and we played live in there and that created the big sound for it, like a big drum sound, you know, a lot of room and reverb, and then we just kind of went on and really didn’t take it too far, we recorded the foundations live and added on that, over-dubbed with the vocals over it.

If your head were to be an animal what would it be?
Probably a giraffe.

Really? Do you have a long neck?
(Laughs) Yeah. I would have a really long neck and a giraffe’s head up on my shoulders.

Nanna Bryndís Hilmarsdóttir and Ragnar Þórhallsson

Being that your songs are derived from stories and books, have you read anything recently that has inspired you?
Well, they [Nanna and Raggie] usually write stories because it is their way of writing lyrics. It is kind of hard for two people to write love song lyrics, so it is just a way for them to write together. They just write stories. Sometimes they are real and sometimes they are just fiction, so that is kind of what they do.

So would you say the band are big readers?
Our [Icelandic] people are very used to story-telling. They are like this old, old national stories that have been kept for hundreds of years that we are always told as children. Stories of elves and trolls and weird stuff happening, so we are kind of used to that, and that is probably why we are used to these story-telling lyrics.

Your song “Little Talks” has received a legit mainstream following in the U.S. How do you feel the mainstream music scene is different over here than in Iceland, and did you expect “Little Talks” to take off like it did?
Well we didn’t expect the song to take off like it did, it was just crazy. When we recorded “Little Talks,” we recorded “From Finner” as well. We thought “From Finner” was going to be way more of a hit, so we were going to put that on the radio station, so we didn’t even realize what we had in our hands.
With the difference between Iceland mainstream and U.S., it’s kind of different. I think it’s such a small country that the music scene is really big. We have so much diversity and genres, and we have all kinds. And I think it’s because everyone knows each other, everyone is familiar with everybody. So you can’t copy someone else, you can’t do something similar to someone else. In Iceland if you do something similar then it is kind of forbidden. So it’s kind of weird, I think. It’s kind of different from the rest of the world, the music scene. And radio play is just different.

Nanna Bryndís Hilmarsdóttir and Kristján Páll Kristjánsson

Where would you say you derived your primary influences?
We are all from really different backgrounds in the band. And we all listen to very different stuff. But I’ve been listening to bands like Radiohead and more into rock music, so together we make up a good blend of influences, so that would be possibly how we did this.

Being that both you and your supporting act, Soley, are from Iceland, do you guys ever get into traditional Iceland food or things that remind you of home while on tour?
I did not know her personally, but some other guys in the band knew her because you always know everybody. But always when I get a pizza, wherever it is I am, I always get reminded of how good my pizza back home is. There is this one pizza place that I always go to that is near my house and all the guys, me the drummer and the singer, we all love this place, so that is one of the things that I miss from home sometimes because I’m used to this different pizza I like or something.

Is the pizza better over there?
I think so, but it is just probably me missing home or something.

Have you had New York pizza yet?
No, but eventually we will because pizza is a big part of our food here. Because if you play a show, you can’t really get nothing else but pizza it’s so late.

Of Monsters and Men in Jacksonville at "The Big Ticket" event. Photo by Dan Florez.

Will you guys make it back to Iceland for the holidays?
Yes we are going home and going right into Christmas. We break into all of the presents of Christmas Eve, it’s always been like that. And we don’t really celebrate Christmas Day. It’s more like staying home and cooking dinner together. It’s totally different from here.

What’s next?
We are going to New Zealand and Japan and doing a Euro-tour after that and South America after that. Hopefully we’ll get some time to compose next summer and then we can probably put into a new album very soon. Everyone is the band is ready to make something new.

On Facebook it says that you were birds and are now monsters. Can you explain how this happened?
When Nanna first started playing as a solo project it was called Songbird, and it was basically becoming Of Monsters and Men. We used to be birds, and now we’re monsters. And thinking about a bird becoming a monster is kind of cool as well.