A FEVER YOU CAN’T SWEAT OUT
POP MUSIC IS A DANGEROUS GAME, BUT WITH THEIR BOUNCY AND BOISTEROUS FEVERDREAM, OF MONSTERS AND MEN HAVE LANDED A HIGH SCORE.
Wikipedia describes a fever dream as being “particularly intense or confusing”, which makes it perfect to represent the long-awaited third album by Icelandic indie-poppers Of Monsters And Men. Dipping and diving around a spellbinding spate of sounds that covers the entire musical spectrum, the 40-minute mammoth stands as their most diverse and dynamic effort yet.
As the band gear up to make their way Down Under for this year’s Falls Festival, we caught up with guitarist Brynjar Leifsson to riff on how Fever
Dream came to life, why it took Of Monsters And Men in a bold new direction, and what fans can expect to see when he and the rest of the fivesome tear it up on our stages later this month.
What was the mission statement you had with the stylistic direction you wanted to take Fever Dream in?
I think we just wanted to write music that would provoke a feeling. On the first album, we provoked a lot of happy feelings – there was a lot of joy and happiness on [ My Head Is An Animal], and then [ Beneath The Skin] was very emotional and kind of melancholic. I think those are two sides of us that we
both enjoy writing from, but we wanted to recapture some of the free spirit that we had on the first album. But still, of course, have that… I have the perfect Icelandic word for it, but I can’t find the right English word! We wanted to capture the joy of the first album and the melancholy of the second one. And we wanted to change the way we went about writing and recording music, because that’s kind of where we got stuck on this one. We got tired of tired of the way we were putting the songs together. So on this one, we challenged all of that. We stepped out our comfort zone a lot and created a new workflow.
So did that upset the status quo for you as a guitarist in particular?
No one in the band is a traditional guitar player. We don’t write out riffs and stuff like that, so it comes more naturally for us to use [the guitar] more as an atmospheric instrument. Kind of set the mood for the record. “Alligator” is very guitar-driven and there are some big riffs in there, but it’s nice to try things that you normally wouldn’t do with an instrument. I think because we haven’t studied music a lot, I wouldn’t say we’re master players. So we kind of approach every instrument in the same way. We ask ourselves whether it needs to be in the track to begin with, and if so, how we can have it mix in and create something that works together. We’re not the type of band to have people go, “This is my instrument and I do this, so it has to be here.”
I like that – it shows the versatility of not just the guitar, but musical instruments in general.
I think it’s useful for a guitarist to have a skill to sell – and I think everyone in the band has that – but if you kind of challenge it and you think about everything in the bigger picture... Everything is everything. The piano can sound the same way a guitar can with the right effects, for example. So, we can just kind of play with it and keep it open.
Do you remember what guitars you were playing on in the studio?
I played my custom Martin guitar for the acoustic stuff. It’s an M body, I think… I don’t remember exactly what I did with it. I played my ‘76 Les Paul, too, which is mighty fine because I’m left-handed and they don’t have a lot of vintage left-handed instruments out there. We also like Duesenberg a lot. I played my Duesenberg as well, and then basically just a lot of piano. This would be a perfect question for our main guitarist Brynjar [Leifsson] because he has about 20 guitars that he just alternates between.
What do you think will define your sets at the Falls Festival this December?
I think it’s all about emotion. It’s all about doing it together. We’re not here to just be onstage, we’re here to be with a crowd. English is not our first language, which means we sometimes forget words and stuff like that – so we’re not the greatest at talking to people, but we like to get them involved in our set. People can just let down their guard and be in the moment with us, and that’s what we like the most.
You’re also playing a few sideshows – what would you say separates the vibe between your festival set and a headliner?
We plan to go a bit deeper and show off more of our sides. You can get away with playing more of a balance and more intimate songs [at a headliner], whereas a festival set is shorter so we you want to punch through it and play something that gets the crowd going. We bring people up with us, and then we take them down for a couple of slower songs.