Photo Credit: Kevin O’Sullivan (18th February – London) and Lene Ray (24th February – Bournemouth)
From a frankly miserable, rain-lashed Camden evening into something approaching a folk-fuelled fever dream, Of Monsters and Men transformed Roundhouse into a 2,000-capacity sanctuary. As the band’s first proper UK shows since 2019 — bar a smattering of intimate record store appearances in October and Nanna Bryndís Hilmarsdóttir’s solo outing (as ‘Nanna’) at O’Meara in 2023 — long time coming doesn’t cover it, and fans were eager to see their favourite tracks from the band’s fourth album, All Is Love and Pain in the Mouse Parade.
Whatever the reason — cabin fever, collective nostalgia, or simply relief at escaping the downpour — the atmosphere inside the circular venue was buoyant from the outset. Which could only help fellow Icelander Arny Margret, tasked with warming up a crowd already humming with anticipation.
There was something delicately… avian about Arny Margret’s voice. Warbling feels too loose a word. Trilling too decorative. Crooning too… sultry? Whatever the correct verb, she held the Roundhouse in rapt silence — so much so that when she teasingly refused to play the final few notes of a song, the audience didn’t dare interrupt the spell.
Opener in tall buildings set the tone: sparse guitar, trembling vocals, a silent crowd and sense that the lightest touch might shatter the moment. As the half-hour progressed, the cavernous globe felt increasingly intimate, the crowd drawn inward by emotionally rich soundscapes rather than outward spectacle. Born in Spring and sometime only deepened the hush, while Crooked Teeth bathed the stage in melancholy blue, the vocals seeming to fade into whispers.
In terms of rousing a crowd into motion, her set perhaps felt a little lacking. But as an exercise in stillness — in commanding attention with nothing more than one guitar and a voice that seems perpetually on the brink of breaking — it was quietly remarkable. I Miss You, I Do landed like a confession, and an unreleased harmonica-laced closer somehow felt as though it were building toward a towering, mesmerising crescendo, despite never adding more than heartbreak and restraint.
A curious choice for a support slot, maybe — less warming up the crowd, and more swapping the energy for stillness. But a beautiful one. 9/10
Then, the lights dropped. Anxiety-raising strings swelled, an enveloping blanket of sound that smothered conversation and pulled every gaze forward. The recorded intro of Television Love rolled as silhouettes took their places — seven figures backlit against a backdrop that looked like a cluster of umbrellas, as if to shelter the room from any harsh weather.
And then it began, as Of Monsters And Men broke into both their ‘comeback single’, as it were, and the lovely, calming Dream Team, said umbrellas seeming to make a vibrant smiley face behind.
For a stage that crowded, they made it breathe. Then: King and Lionheart.
It’s strange, having a set mostly devoid of older tracks. Only three from My Head Is An Animal feels almost criminal. There wasn’t even Mountain Sound! So, it was paramount that the band made them count. From the crowd, it felt like any worries of the past decade-and-a-bit were washed away, like messages being swept away by a calming tide. In a word? It was just… wholesome.
Tuna in a Can followed, Ragnar Þórhallsson and Nanna trading vocals with that familiar push-pull warmth, before Alligator — the sole survivor of the Fever Dream era — injected a sanguine, rockier pulse into proceedings.
Human, meanwhile, saw Nanna wielding a melodica, the intro transformed into something almost lo-fi and whimsical — a softened prelude to the slow, faintly haunting track from 2015’s Beneath the Skin. The Actor, introduced as being “about pretending to be fine but not being very good at it,” bled gently into the slow, methodical swell of The Build, and then came the album closer of Mouse Parade. Mid-set, they encircled the centre of the stage, creating a facsimile of an unplugged, one-mic performance — a strange placement for an album closer, perhaps, but hauntingly effective. A suspended, intermission-esque stillness hung in the air. Of course, stillness could only last so long; what better way to break it than with a fan favourite?
Dirty Paws detonated that calm in an instant — the crowd howling every word — before Empire and Crystals added scale and shimmer. On Ordinary Creature, Ragnar divided the room into thirds, urging each section to drown the others out during the bridge, while Styrofoam Cathedral erupted into an instrumental crescendo that felt almost post-rock in intensity, Nanna unleashing an impressively sustained shout that seemed to pierce the air with the passion.
And then: Little Talks. Still, objectively, one of the biggest songs of the past fifteen years. Even a modern karaoke classic for some people. The kind of track that transcends indie-folk categorisation and simply becomes part of the cultural wallpaper. A track that’s comfortably sitting in the ‘Billion Club’ on Spotify. A track that everyone there knew and screamed along to, even if there was a chance that, for some people there, it might have been the sole reason they were there. And, to add to the fun of it, Arny Margret returned, harmonica in hand, as if completing a gentle Icelandic circle begun earlier in the night!
But that wasn’t the end, thankfully – if a little strangely! No, that honour went to 2020’s stand-alone single of Visitor, Nanna venturing into the pit to embrace fans as the slightly sinister song unfolded.
A double-tracked encore of The End and Fruit Bat happily ran the gamut of sounds and genres, from a stripped back, acoustic The End to the more explosive climax of Fruit Bat, the band’s instrumental crescendo refusing to let the night end — until, inevitably, it had to. But the crowd’s cheers lasted long after the band left the stage.
Even if some of the group’s newer material seemed to lack some of the energy and fun that their earlier works were inundated with — it felt slightly more like watching the band perform rather than being a part of it, as with older tours — a great night was had by all. Welcome back guys. 8.5/10
Written By: James O’Sullivan
