Of Monsters And Men, The Tabernacle, Atlanta, Nov. 29, 2012

Icelandic folk-pop band Of Monsters And Men played last evening at The Tabernacle in Atlanta.  Even though I had tickets, I almost didn't go, forcing me to consider my ambivalent attitudes toward music, popularity, and success.

Please let me explain.  I first heard the band Of Monsters And Men in October 2011, when KEXP Seattle covered the Icelandic Airwaves festival in Reykjavik and posted several videos of emerging Icelandic bands.  Iceland has a surprisingly vibrant and diverse music scene, that goes well beyond Bjork - in fact, the current scene there has absolutely nothing to do with Bjork at all.  I enjoyed a lot of what I heard coming from the small island nation, and my mind was truly blown to learn that even Greenland now has its own music scene.

I think I fell in love with Greenland's charming Nive Nielsen during her giggle at the 2:41 mark.  But already I'm off track.  See how easily I go off track?  All it takes in an Inuk giggle.

During this discovery of Icelandic and Greenlandic bands, one group clearly stood out from the rest due to their songwriting and sound, their harmonies, and their professionalism.  It was clear to me then that Of Monsters And Men could  make it big in the U.S. someday, and share billings with bands like Blind Pilot, The Head And The Heart, and Milo Greene.  I could even imagine them opening for Arcade Fire.  I looked forward to seeing them tour the States some day, and thought there were big things in store for this little band.

It turns out that I was more right than I knew.  The band did come to the U.S. early this year,  where they played on the spring festival circuit (Coachella, SXSW, Sasquatch, etc.) to rave reviews.  Videos got posted, music blogs praised their sound, and they rode the inexplicable Mumford and Sons wave to great popularity.  When their album My Head Is An Animal was released in April 2012, it shot up to the Number 6 spot on the Billboard Charts, and the Edward Sharpe-like single Little Talks reached Number One on the Alternative Music Chart.

But it seems we indie music lovers have a complex relationship with success.  The more other people start to listen to our favorite bands, the more suspicious we become of those bands.  Part of the snob appeal of listening to these emerging artists is hearing their brilliance before the rest of the world and enjoying our little secrets, but once a song reaches Number One and is used for automobile commercials, soundtracks to Katherine Heigl films, and karaoke, we tend to deny we ever liked it that much in the first place.

One way to avoid this hypocricy is to claim you don't like anything at all and to criticize everything, as is done  by cynical anonymous commenters on many a music blog.  But that strikes me as a particularly joyless solution to this dilemma.

Hipster snobbishness aside, my major complaint with new-found popularity is the crowds.  Instead of playing a little club like The Earl to an over-21 audience, or even a relatively intimate all-ages show at the Variety Playhous, Of Monsters And Men's first appearance in Atlanta was to a capacity crowd of high-schoolers at the cavernous Tabernacle.  I would much rather see a band up close and personal at some little club than from a distance while in the middle of a crowd of teenagers.  

Was it even worth going?, I wondered last evening.  I had become sick and tired of hearing that "Hey!" from Little Talks a long time ago, that shout that they co-opted from Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros and which The Lumineers subsequently bludgeoned to death with their hit song "Hey, Ho."  I was watching the time slip away last night, but just before the clock passed the point where it would no longer be worthwhile even trying to go, I rallied my enthusiasm and jumped in the car.

Only to run smack into the NFL traffic of a Thursday night Falcons-Saints game.  I had forgotten that the game was last night, and as The Tabernacle isn't far at all from the Georgia Dome, I suddenly found myself in the middle of gridlocked traffic, with the police trying to direct the flow of cars, including mine, to stadium parking lots.  Streets I wanted to take were closed, two-way streets were temporarily one-way (in the opposite direction of where I wanted to head), and for a while there it looked like I wasn't going to make it to The Tabernacle after all.

Nothing makes me more determined to do something than being told that I can't.  Now, I decided when my  car hadn't advanced more that two car-lengths in the past five minutes, I'm determined to stand in the middle of a bunch of teenagers and listen to some Icelandics with guitars shout "Hey!" at me. I peeled out of the line of traffic by doing a U-turn in the middle of Marietta Street, found my way over to Tech Parkway, and eventually down to Centennial Park and then over to The Tabernacle, with time still left before the show.  There were crowds of tailgaters in all of the parking lots, and I consider myself extraordinarily lucky to have found a solitary available spot in my usual lot right next to The Tabernacle (although at an exorbitant, "Special Event" rate).  I got inside The Tabernacle and waded into the sea of teenagers on the floor just as the show was scheduled to start.

The scheduled opener was Elle King, who for some reason wasn't able to make it to the show (traffic?).  But rather than start with the next act, Iceland's Sóley Stefánsdóttir, a member of the indie collective Seabear and another one of those Icelandic Airwaves discoveries, we were allowed to stand around and wait 40 minutes, the approximate length of a warm-up act, before Sóley finally took the stage. I spent the time watching the score of the Falcon's game on my Droid and wondering if I shouldn't just head back home and cut my losses.

I liked Sóley's set and she has an appealing stage presence, but her intricate and intimate music isn't really suited to large venues and the crowd of teenagers was there to hear Of Monsters And Men perform songs from My Head Is An Animal, not to hear someone named Sóley.  Much talking and socializing during her set by the audience distracted one from more fully appreciating her set, which included her song I'll Drown.  I think she's a performer who would absolutely captivate a Terminal West crowd, but unfortunately not that crowd at that place at that time.

Of Monsters And Men took that stage at 9:45 and played a really terrific set for the next hour, followed by a two-song encore. For those of you who somehow have escaped them to date, the band is fronted by two singers,the adorable Nanna Bryndís Hilmarsdóttir and the rotund Ragnar "Raggi" Þórhallsson.

As oddly matched as they may appear, their voices harmonize perfectly, and their warm harmonies account for much of the appeal of listening to Of Monsters And Men.  Their singing and playing are supported by guitarist Brynjar Leifsson, whose Nordic look alone would probably have made him a rock star regardless of OMAM.

The rhythm section consists of bow-tied bassist Kristján Páll Kristjánsson and drummer/cheerleader Arnar Rósenkranz Hilmarsson.   

Finally, the sound is rounded out with a pair of multi-instrumentalists, namely keyboardist/accordion player Árni Guðjónsson and keyboardist/accordion player/trumpeter Ragnhildur Gunnarsdóttir.

As the band played, whatever snobbish disdain I had for their success quickly melted away and I found myself really enjoying their set.  They have everything that I like in this genre of music.  Good harmonies?  Check.  Interesting instrumentation? Check.  Performers who occasionally switch roles and instruments? Check.  A floor tom on which performers can occasionally bang away? Check.  They've got it all.

It was inevitable that one of these large, folk-rock collectives was going to eventually make it big.  The genre is growing and  seems surprisingly popular with teens and young adults.  I've rarely seen more affection from an audience for a band than I have at some of these shows, particularly for The Head And The Heart and for Blind Pilot, and if any of these bands were finally going to make it big, it might as well be those sincere young men and women from Iceland.

While I found some of their audience participation a little forced - it seems like every song in the first half of their set required us to clap, sing a particular passage, wave our arms, or do something - they settled down in the second half, letting the music speak for itself and allowing the audience to participate in its own manner.  By the time they got to their hit Little Talks toward the end of the set, the whole audience sang along to every word, Head-And-The-Heart-style.
   

Their set even included a cover of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs' moody Skeletons.

During their encore, Brynjar Leifsson played some sort of guitar made from an old gas can, Nanna and Raggi harmonized as beautifully as ever, and Nanna even took a turn wailing away on the floor tom for a while.

I left the show with a big smile on my face and beat the traffic home before the football game got out.  By the way, the Falcons won the game 23-13, improving their record to 11-1.

The lesson in all of this is not to begrudge the success of others.