We’ll make it up to you by not mentioning Björk while reviewing Icelandic folks…

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Iain Mew: Seafaring indie-folk that stands out mostly through the interplay between singers Nanna Hilmarsdóttir (like Ellie Goulding with better enunciation) and Ragnar Þórhallsson (the Torquil to her Amy). She complains, he reassures her, they argue with a lively warmth and manage to make their bodies winding up on shore sound like a positive outcome. The band shout and kick up a party as sails creak and they take doom head-on with a smile.
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Jonathan Bogart: It’s no “Jolly Roger“, that’s for sure.
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Alfred Soto: Call and response vocals, kids: they enliven any song. Imagine Beth Orton and Dean Wareham blankly exchanging romantic platitudes.
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Katherine St Asaph: Florence Welch stopped taking voice lessons, got over her Pre-Raphaelite phase and moved to Portland, where she met a pleasant-voiced boy making driftwood ships. They had a very sweet, very silly and very outdoor relationship. Even their squabbles and complications sounded like picnics in the park. Good for them.
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Brad Shoup: Maybe this is the logical terminus of fetishizing the innocence of youth: bitter recrimination. I dig the internal rhyme in the pre-chorus, even though it’s performing slick misdirection with some equivocation and nautical silliness. The inflexible gypsy chug is fine, if a little funny. I can’t really go for that Choir Aleksandrov bullshit, though; mincing around a lost idyllic childhood and shouting “hey!” on the three do not mix.
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Edward Okulicz: More indie or folksy acts could liven up their palate and inspire a bit of head nodding if they would bite the bullet and stick on some accordion sounds. Of Monsters and Men, to their credit, don’t sound like they’re doing it under duress.
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Anthony Easton: I was worried that the chair that I am sitting on was going to collapse under my fat ass as I sat and listened to this. That wins some points for verisimilitude. 
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