Of Monsters And Men have announced their new album ‘All Is Love And Pain In The Mouse Parade’ and previewed it with a new single, ‘Ordinary Creature’. Listen below.
The Icelandic band shared today (August 7) that their first full-length album in six years will arrive on October 17. You can pre-order it here.
According to a press release, the follow-up to 2019’s ‘Fever Dream’ is deeply introspective, charting the human spectrum of joy and sorrow, love and pain.
Having drawn inspiration from the band’s personal lives and the wider community that surrounds them, singer and lyricist Nanna Hilmarsdóttir described their collective history as an integral part of the record, functioning as a shared narrative that shaped the album’s emotional landscape.
The indie-folk band have also marked their return with the new self-produced single ‘Ordinary Creature’, written and recorded in their Iceland studio. Speaking about the new track, the group said it was about accepting life’s often bittersweet nature.
“Ordinary Creature is about the feeling of yearning for that someone that brings you comfort,” they said of the song.
“It’s about when you start feeling better after a period of not feeling so great. That moment when you start coming back to yourself again and remembering what it’s like to be an ordinary creature.”
Newly shared visuals directed by Erlendur Sveinsson capture the band during a summer night and early morning in Iceland, with the music video following them through the quiet streets of tiny coastal town Selvogur.
Back in 2019, Hilmarsdóttir told NME that ‘Fever Dream’ dealt more with her female perspective, and that on the whole the work acted as a “learning curve” as to what space the band could occupy.
“We’re two lyricists, me and Raggi [Ragnar Þórhallsson], writing from two very different experiences. This time, it felt important that we tell our own stories more,” she said. “For me, because I was writing more on my own, they have more of a feminine aspect. It’s dealing with what it’s like to be a woman. I allowed myself to go there a lot more this time around.”
In a three-star review of the record, Hannah Mylrea wrote for NME: “Their clear talent is masked by trendy production and unimaginative writing. That’s not to say the album is bad, just disappointing as it feels like they have so much more to give. ‘Fever Dream’ is perfectly listenable, but missing the magic spark that made them smash successes when they first emerged.”