Fluxblog
September 8th, 2019 5:45pm

The Starlit Sky Grew Before My Eyes


Of Monsters and Men “Alligator”

“Alligator” is an outlier for Of Monsters and Men – a very mid-00s sort of hard-charging dance rock anthem coming from a band more at home in an 2010s indie-folk mode. This fact is a bit maddening in that this song exhibits such a mastery of up tempo rock dynamics that it’s hard to comprehend why they’d only do this once, and why the rest of the album this song comes from sounds nothing like it. Like, not just that the other songs don’t rock in the same way, but that they sound like a completely different band in an aggravating band-and-switch sort of way.

“Alligator” is a song with a relentless, focused drive and a restless energy. The arrangement is constantly shifting – the structure is straightforward verse/chorus/verse, but the music never lets your ear settle into anything for more than 10 seconds or so before dropping something out or layering something else in. Nanna Bryndís Hilmarsdóttir’s voice is a revelation here, showing off a sort of grit and sassiness that wasn’t quite there on previous material, and a earthy intensity that keeps the soaring chorus from getting too corny. There’s a general feeling of empowerment to the song, but it’s all grounded in something dark and elemental that’s suggested but not fully explicated by the lyrics – there’s stars and light and soil and water, and rituals of life, death, and rebirth. The hook is “wake me up, I’m fever dreaming,” but it’s never quite clear what part of this is the dream.

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