Last night I went to see Of Monsters and Men play a free show at the Fillmore in Silver Spring, MD. Apparently Silver Spring has something called “A Taste of Iceland”, which this show was part of. As you might guess Of Monsters and Men are from Iceland is their opening act, Lay Low. My friend Lindsey alerted me to this concert. I met her last summer, and she’s awesome because we both share the same taste in music and love going to see it played live. Previously I had friends who either liked the music I liked but weren’t interested in going to concerts or friends who liked concerts but were not familiar with the bands I like so they never wanted to go see them with me.

I was unsure going in if we were even going to get into the concert. We wouldn’t know until we got down there, and given that the rest of the shows on their tour that you actually had to pay for sold out in a matter of minutes I figured lots of people were going to be trying to get in. For some reason they had you print free tickets online, but also stated that the tickets did not guarantee entry, which was on a first come first serve basis. The tickets were entirely pointless as no one very looked at them at all. We got down there about 30 minutes before the doors opened and got into line which was already around the block from the entrance. Happily right after getting in line they handed us wristbands and told us that guaranteed us entry so we didn’t even have to stand there and wonder, which was great. We even got fairly close to the front of the room and didn’t have any super tall people in front of us so I actually could see which is rare for me at standing room only concerts.

Unfortunately my magnet for the most annoying people at concerts was in full effect. Seriously, if you want to find the most obnoxiously drunk people who have no consideration for the people around them come find me. They’ll be right next to me. We had some stupid drunk guy and his girlfriend who were jumping all around and spinning each other and all kinds of ridiculous stuff that there was no room for. Even worse was the fact that during the set change they were literally making out on top of one of the other people I was there with. They were leaning up against her back as if she was a wall and totally going at it. Not cool at all. There was also a girl who passed out right in front of us during the set change, who was completely unrelated to them. She was obviously trying to get out of the crowd, but didn’t make it before she passed out and then the guy she was with kind of dragged her out. But this is a blog about happy things, so we shall leave the drunken idiots behind and move on to much happier things like the amazing music.

I had never heard of the opening act, Lay Low, before last night but really liked her/them. From what I could gather Lay Low is actually the stage name for singer Lovísa Elísabet Sigrúnardóttir who sometimes plays with a band backing her and sometimes not. Last night the band was with her, but I have no idea if the band has a name or not. The sang in both English and Icelandic so that was kind of fun. By and By was one of the songs they played last night that I really liked.

I was much more familiar with Of Monsters and Men whose song “Little Talks” I have been in love with for months and blogged about back in November. I also bought their first album, when it came out a few weeks ago and it’s great. According to all the press I’ve seen there are 6 people in the band, but there were actually 7 people on stage last night so I don’t know what was up with that. They were lots of fun and into the crowd, which I always appreciate at concerts. Also, this has nothing to do with anything really but the lead female singer totally reminded me of Edie Brickell circa the 1980s because of the way she wore her hair and the hat she was wearing. The resemblance stops there, but I kept thinking that the whole concert so felt that I should share. They’ll be playing The Newport Folk Festival this summer, and I look forward to seeing them again there.

If you’re familiar with anything by Of Monsters and Men I’m sure it’s “Little Talks”, but since I’ve already included that in my blog previously I’m going to link to “Mountain Sound”, which they had us do a kind of sing along with last night.

As a bonus I’m also including this compilation someone made of all the times they say the world La on their album, which is kind of awesome and funny because there are a lot. You don’t really realize how often they do it because it works really well with their music, but I overheard someone talking about this on the way to our car last night and looked it up. Here it is in all it’s glory all 7 minutes of las.