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Of Monsters & Men did the impossible this year by taking a trumpet-led folk single into the midst of the UK Top Twenty, scoring a huge hit single with 'Little Talks' and rubbing shoulders with the likes of David Guetta and Rihanna in the charts.
The band hit the UK festival scene as well, playing slots at Latitude, Reading & Leeds and more events, and this week release new single 'Mountain Sound'. We caught up with frontwoman Nanna Bryndís Hilmarsdóttir to discuss the band's phenomenal year, how she got starstruck in front of Robert Smith from The Cure and why she's glad to have a second girl in the band when touring with five windy male musicians...
It's been a big year for you. What's been your highlight of 2012?
It's hard to say. It all feels like one big soup! This whole experience has been amazing. We only started touring in March, so travelling and playing all the festivals we have played in front of so many people has been the highlight.
How did you find the UK festival scene?
We played Reading and Leeds and they were crazy. We played very early in the day but it was amazing. A lot of people came out to see us and had a good time with us, so we really enjoyed it. You always hear great things about Reading and Leeds so it's great to be a part of it. We played and then left straight away sadly, so we didn't get to experience much of the festival. I guess that's the bad part of being in a band, you always have to just get on the bus and drive off.
Which other bands have you most enjoyed sharing a bill with?
We've had a chance to be on festival line-ups with some very cool artists and some of my personal favourites like The Cure, Bon Iver and Feist. We are a very shy band - so we haven't actually met any of these people, but we have seen them all backstage and i'm like 'Oh my God I can't even speak'. I saw Robert Smith from The Cure and there was no way I could talk to him! I thought about it afterwards - and wondered what I had been thinking! How many people get the chance to be in the same place as Robert Smith. I should have just gone and introduced myself. Maybe next year. Maybe at the next festival experience i'll be more daring.
Have there been any bad performance experiences along the way?
Of course. Its how you work out of those experiences that defines you. When we started out it was often very hard, we were more acoustic back then. People would talk and talk and we were fighting the crowd to get their attention, and back then people weren't coming to see us to perform necessarily. We had a show not so very long ago where I was very surprised by the atmosphere, because we had gotten used to having such amazing crowds and this crowd was very weird and very hard, but it's how you handle those moments that make or break you.
Did you get noisier to make people listen to you more closely?
It was like that. We were fed up of going, playing and no one would hear us. We needed to take control and overpower the people who are talking. Changing our sound did have a huge impact I think.
Has 'Mountain Sound' been chosen as your new single because it's the newest track on the album - and not one you've been playing constantly for the past two years solid?
None of these songs have become tired, but it's really fun to be playing 'Mountain Sound' and 'Slow And Steady' as well, because that's a new song for us as well. It was very cool for us to play shows and have some new material. Now we're just itching to have some new material to play because it's great to have something fresh.
Watch Of Monsters And Men's 'Mountain Sound' video below
My Head Is An Animal is very much influenced by animals, magic and your upbringing in Iceland. You've spent the last year in a tourbus. Is that going to affect the sound of the second album?
I feel like all of us have experienced things in the past few months that have changed us. We've grown so much in such a short period of time and it's moved really fast for us - but when we get back home everything is just the same. It's very weird and when we made the first album we were kind of stuck in a place where nothing ever changes. Iceland is very calm and things just move on their own pace. Then you get out into the world and everything is so fast and has to happen right now - it's a very different world to what we're used to. My Head Is An Animal sounds the way it sounds because that was the mindset we were in back then. The next album is definitely going to be inspired by what we've seen and what we've felt and what we've been doing. Someone said that you bring ideas in your travelling backpack, then you get back home and you build on that.
Do you think you might get louder still?
It could happen, yeah.
What steps have you made towards work on the second album?
It's happening slowly now. When we get back home, you fall back into your routine and that's when you start writing again. Ideas have been coming but we haven't all met, rehearsed and brought it all to life. But something is definitely happening...
You've been joined by a second girl, Ragnhildur Gunnarsdóttir, on tour. Does having her around help cope with being on tour in a band of boys?
Yeah, definitely. We get along very well and it kind of levels things out when the boys are all talking about their farts. Actually, we sometimes talk about our farts as well...
You're back in Iceland now. What's on the schedule for the rest of the year?
We're going to go back to America to do a five-week tour. We get home just before Christmas and spend the holidays at home, New Year's Eve is just lazy in Iceland. After that we'll be touring until next summer. That's our plan - tour and tour and tour.
'Mountain Sound' is taken from Of Monsters & Men's debut album My Head Is An Animal. Both are available now.
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