Everyone Can Learn from Of Monsters and Men’s Mouse Parade.
Words By: Anya Duncan
For more than a decade, Of Monsters and Men have been Iceland’s most recognisable musical export, their sweeping anthems carrying the wind and weather of their homeland to stages across the world.
Though often far from the Atlantic, the band have consistently turned their listeners’ thoughts back toward Iceland. Their newest album, All Is Love and Pain in the Mouse Parade (released globally on 17 October), does just that, inviting us into their landscape, not just its glaciers and storms, but its living folklore and the community that shaped them as artists.
"I've been very fascinated with this idea of community," says vocalist and guitarist Nanna, reflecting on the album’s emotional centre. "When we started out as a band, we were only part of the Icelandic music scene, but then we went out touring. It was only in COVID when we came back [to Iceland] that we were reintroduced to the community here. I understood, I think, this lacking feeling I had."
The album’s title may sound whimsical, but its central image, the mouse parade emerged from careful observation and imagination. The band began picturing mice running beneath the floorboards of a vacant house, building tiny worlds out of sight. These mice became a metaphor for the quiet lives and stories that coexist beneath the surface of any community, including their own. “To me it’s like they are reciting history, and they do it collectively. They always speak in ‘we’,” Nanna explains, describing a vision that ultimately shaped the record.
Images above, below & Last Image - Nanna Wears:Top & Skirt - All Saints, Over skirt - Sól Hansdóttir
Raggi Wears: Jacket - Wax, Trousers - All saints, T shirt - Wax
If their early work conjured vast, stormy landscapes, All Is Love and Pain in the Mouse Parade feels more like standing inside a house with rain at the windows;The buildings… I don’t know, it’s funny sometimes when working on albums, I feel like there’s a thread throughout that can be found. I guess your childhood home or any other building can sometime represent containment and something kind of harsh, but also, it’s a safe place. This duality of shelter breeding confinement, and sorrow entrancing beauty runs through the album’s ten tracks. I think a lot of this record is about seeing things in two different ways and saying that both can exist at the time.
The intimacy of these sessions also brought surprises. One of the most affecting tracks, Barefoot in the Snow, nearly didn’t make the cut. There was a demo of it from back in COVID... and we realised we just can’t recreate this. It kind of has to be what it was in the beginning. Some of the vocals are still just from the demo vocals. Preserving those early takes keeps the song rooted in its original moment, a fragment of time captured rather than repainted.
Nanna Wears: Full set - Sister Jane Shoes - Stylists own
Raggi Wears: Jacket - Wax, Trousers - All saints, shoes - Stylist own, Hat & T - Artists own
Their return to Iceland has reshaped how they think about sharing their music. The band have announced another tour to accompany this album rooted in home, and are determined to keep their community close.
“We’re right in the midst of figuring the whole thing out right now. This record is so close to home and a lot of it is very hands-on. We’re figuring these things out and then bringing our friends along. We’re bringing mostly local Icelandic people who work in the scene here. Like our lighting designer: he’s the uncle of our drummer!”
For all their global reach, Of Monsters and Men remain connected to a scene that feels almost village sized.
Their touring philosophy has also evolved alongside their music. I do think we have the luxury of living on an island here in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean... You have to have the space to grow and find what you’re gonna write about next. You have to have some life experience and it’s really hard to do that on the road. Ultimately, you just try to do what works for you and hopefully people come along on that journey.
Image above and cover image - Nanna Wears: Jumper -Peregrine, Jeans- Guess, Coat - All saints, Boots - Stylists own
Raggi Wears: Hat - Wax, Jumper - Gander, Trousers and shoes -Stylists own
Much like their previous records, All Is Love and Pain in the Mouse Parade is full of smaller narratives. This album is a tapestry,” Nanna says. “These things are revealing themselves along the way and the songs are all telling these small stories, but that are all a part of a bigger story. The result is a work that feels layered and lived-in, full of mice, houses, childhood friends, and the quiet urgency of making music together.
This is a homecoming album. Not nostalgic in a way that excludes listeners unfamiliar with Iceland, but restorative. It asks us to walk alongside the band, to step into their community and hear its heartbeat. To listen to the mouse parade as it recalls snapshots in time and letters written without the need for reply. What Of Monsters and Men offer here is not just a collection of songs, but an invitation: to see love and pain as intertwined, to recognise both and to understand that together they tell the truest stories of home.
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