Of Monsters and Men: 'I feel like there’s been a mentality shift'

Nanna won’t need more than that to warm up though. The Garðabær indie-folk five-piece, long held in high esteem and acclaim for their storybook melodies and emotive live power, are set to draw plenty of healthy crowds for this month’s run behind last year’s fourth record All is Love and Pain in the Mouse House. Bar a stripped-back slate of shows last autumn, it marks their first full jaunt on British shores since before the Covid-19 pandemic; a full world away in chart terms.

Their appetite for the road has certainly not been dimmed. “We played Nantwich!” she exclaims, as if she has discovered some secret known only beyond Cheshire borders. “It had the most incredible church. I really enjoy it when we get to go to smaller towns. There are places you don’t get to travel a lot.”

So what took them so long to get back out there, after a six-year wait for new material? Nanna gives a wry shuffle. “We’ve always taken a while between albums. We usually put one out, tour a lot and come back home. We’re not very good at writing on the road. With the pandemic, we all kind of went into our own different worlds though. We felt the need to explore different things, in our own directions.”

Those directions bore fruit. Nanna released a solo record, How to Start a Garden, in 2023, and has spent plenty of the intervening years helping to mentor a new generation of homegrown talent. But the call of her first love with the band was always going to be too sweet to resist.

“It is two completely different worlds,” she muses. “You think about these things a lot. The community that you build, all of the ways that you compromise. But if you allow it, if you’re open enough, you make something that can be really great. It is nice having full control with my solo work. But I’m very much aware that things get better when you invite people into your world.”

It is put to her that Of Monsters and Men are elder statesmen now, though stressed – to her delight – that at 36, she is not aging out anytime soon herself. But the role and response she has found influencing the next wave of talent is something she does not take lightly.

“I would hope and think you want to get to that place when you’ve made music for a while,” she concurs. “I think it’s beautiful. We started out competing in this thing called Músíktilraunir, kind of like a battle-of-the-bands thing, which is something very important for the Icelandic scene. It’s a celebration of music.”

Nanna feels there is a greater spirit of community now compared to when Of Monsters and Men cut their teeth too. “I remember, we didn’t really feel like we knew what we were doing. We were lucky to have people to take care of us. But I think it has changed a lot. I feel like there’s been a mentality shift. You can see it in the younger generation where they are more open to collaboration.”

That spirit can be found in their live incarnation, bolstered by friends on stage as they seek to fill out the arrangements of their latest record. Last year’s stripped-back shows definitely scratched an itch however. “We played the new album, with different versions. It felt like we hadn’t done it in forever. We like having more people, but there’s something different when it’s low-key. I think we were surprised how much we enjoyed it.”

The cost-of-living crisis plays its part too, though Mouse House at least represented a tactical back-to-basics approach in parts too. “You want to see how you can make touring more cost-effective. We tried the whole thing with playback, but we had a different time playing live. This time, we wanted it to be organic and easy.”

Time is almost up, with two mugs set aside. Before she goes though, does Nanna have a favourite song? There’s no obligation to choose – surely she loves them all equally?

“Fruit Bat,” she says promptly. “I love playing that song. It stretches. There’s not a lot of things holding it down. It’s very free.”

Her lip quivers, and then she cackles again. “I don’t love them all equally! Don’t tell anyone!”

Of Monsters and Men play at O2 Academy Leeds on February 26.