Amazon had a sale a few days ago where a bunch of popular albums were on sale for $0.99. The main reason I went was to get a backup copy of Ceremonials by Florence+The Machine, because that’s an album well worth owning two copies of. But I think I ended up buying half of what was on offer, because who can say no to new music for a buck?
The two best new things I picked up were The Lumineers by the Lumineers, which tickles the same part of my brain that likes Mumford & Sons. (Who I am hopefully going to see at the end of August squee!)
But even better was Of Monsters and Men, a band from Iceland. Their first album is called My Head Is An Animal, which is the second line from the first song, Dirty Paws.
I love this song in ways I can’t even begin to describe.
It’s a strange little song if you really listen to the lyrics, but the first few times I just let it wash through my head and ran along with the guitar like I really was in the words. In the comments of the youtube video I posted, someone states that the band members said in an interview the lyrics originated in a game where they went around the circle and made up the song one line at a time. I don’t know if that’s true, but I can believe it, the way the song is constructed.
Either way, I love Dirty Paws because it feels like a dream, or a fairy tale. And:
The forest that once was green
Was colored black by those killing machines
Beautiful.
I like every song on the album, but my other favorite is Little Talks, which also has one of the trippiest music videos I’ve seen in a while. But it adds that sort of fairy tale feel to the song that I love so:
And the lyrics are absolutely beautiful, a conversation between the living and the dead.
Lakehouse and Mountain Sound are also excellent. Well, the entire album is excellent, I think, but I generally tend to like songs with a more driven beat to begin with. I really hope I get a chance to see these guys in concert at some point.