Of Monsters and Men, Crawdaddy

Of Monsters and Men, Crawdaddy:

Of Monsters and Men, Crawdaddy: 

A sunny, Sunday afternoon festival crowd is an easy-to-please one; bands find easy pickings amidst the thousands of punters in search of a band with feel-good songs to sing, clap and stamp their feet along to.

Suppliers of this year's afternoon anthems – presumably in the absence of Mumford and Son's availability – are Iceland's Of Monsters and Men, another folk-rock band intent on making accordions and trumpet solos cool.

Yet while Nanna Bryndis Hilmarsdóttir and co's appeal can't be underestimated – they have drawn a crowd that is twenty deep outside the Crawdaddy Stage - their formulaic tunes differ only in their euphoric, mid-song refrains ('Hey/Oh-oh/dada-dum').

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Even their cover of The Cure's Close to Me saps the pep from the original, rendering it a sluggish and lifeless affair, and while the lively Little Talks breathes life into the set, it's not enough to rescue it from mediocrity - even in the face of enormous popularity.

Verdict: **

Lauren Murphy

Lauren Murphy

Lauren Murphy is a freelance journalist and broadcaster. She writes about music and the arts for The Irish Times