Single Review: Of Monsters And Men’s Ordinary Creature Has Extraordinary Appeal

Iceland’s best-selling alt-folk band creates masterful pop tune with local influence

What does a band do with world fame and 15 years of performing together? In the case of Garðabær indie folkers Of Monsters and Men, they hone their craft. Their new single, “Ordinary Creature,” demonstrates pop songwriting at its highest levels, while playing in the sandbox of revered underground Reykjavík songwriters.

Readers of this magazine might remember Skakkamanage, a roughshod, delightful Reykjavík-based band from the 2000s who captured the chaos of the time with crude Wurlitzer electric piano hooks over steady, driving beats, allowing lyricist Svavar Pétur to deliver his perfectly crafted refrains — repeated lines that weren’t meant to be sung as a chorus, but that locked into the brain.

It was Skakkamanage that came to mind almost 30 seconds into “Ordinary Creature,” as a good pop tune began to breathe and expand into greatness, with a gentle mash of electric guitars and a perfectly placed refrain. The refrain here, introduced at about a minute, based on the keyboard riff that opens the song, is poignant and direct, but not cloying: “I wish I could run to your house when it gets dark out.”

One refrain alone is not enough to create pop perfection, but it can float a song to a higher level. That’s what we have here. A driving, surprisingly conventionally instrumentalised pop song that connects to the feeling of longing in ways that feel deeper than its parts.

Of Monsters and Men have known fame. With their 2013 single “Little Talks,” they became the best-selling Icelandic artists since Björk. The band doesn’t need a local street magazine’s praise, and we have objectively been slow to give it in the past. However, their new single deserves to dominate the pop charts, even in 2025, a year of unusually strong pop songwriters. When it does, it might bring listeners back to the Reykjavík of the 2000s, or it might simply help us get through the oncoming darkness of winter.