I have kept distance from Icelandic band múm for what seems like an eternity. I remember a love affair with their earlier releases - between Yesterday Was Dramatic, Today Is OK and Finally We Are No One… the band had a good thing going for them. The music was often glitchy & electronic but possessed an overall melody that made the music feel warm and alive.
At the time, I was living near Toronto, having to commute into the city during the cold (although not nearly as cold as Quebecois) winter… and the albums made perfect accompaniments to the slow trudge, the people watching, the gazing from train windows at the starless, billowy night sky. The albums, to me, were environmental in that they created an air of jubilance & innocence that stood in stark contrast to the bleak city around me.
The next album, Summer Make Good, found the band down one core member (twin Gyða Valtýsdóttir) and I found something was lost in the transition. The album was too safe, too minimal. There were still hints of the band I had previously come to love but, at that point in my life, it just didn’t have enough meat to warrant my excitement.
After that, the band dropped from my radar. That is, until now.
The rumours are true: after a full three year break, the band is all ready to release a new offering onto the world. But, one must ask, is it the same band that we remember and had come to love?
In truth, it only partly is so. The album was recorded by a group of people under the moniker of múm, but where once stood a quartet - now stands seven. Both twins have now left to do their own thing, leaving the other two original members, Gunnar and Örvar, to man the helm. As such, it really is a different band… so it should come as no surprise that the album itself sounds as fresh as it does.
go go smear the poison ivy, as the album is so eloquently referred to, surprised me. The childish innocence of the band’s early releases makes a return… but instead of beautiful naivety, what we get is a more mature playfulness that comes straight out of left-field. The band have been quoted as calling the music “…like a cross between hovering silently over a field of rhubarb jam and breaking your teeth, remembering how you broke your teeth or dreamily anticipating the time that you eventually will.” Which may not mean much but as someone who has broken his teeth (damn you, youthful Ninja Turtles aspirations)… I can sort of imagine where they are coming from.
It’s a scattered album, similar to recent releases by people like Dan Deacon and Pepe Deluxé make somewhat scattered albums - while each song maintains an overall theme (i.e. gadget monstrosities in the case of Dan, or the flashback nostalgic dance party of le Deluxé), the way each track approaches that goal from completely different angles.
Take, for instance, the lead single off the album “They Made Frogs Smoke ’til They Exploded” which centres around a HARMONICA (honestly, when was the last time you really heard a harmonica, for gods sake), children vocal samples (with a practically total breakdown feature about half way through), what sounds like a broken, distorted casio keyboard. The song is, more than anything else, fun - almost more so when you start cluing into the vocals, which are, astoundingly, about animal cruelty (”don’t pull his limbs off! don’t crush him!”). The mix is a jumble, but it is a jumble that I dearly adore.
Of course, the entire album doesn’t play out that way. By the end, we find múm approaching classic Boards of Canada territory - ambient, electronic songs that come together in such a way that they simultaneously feel epic and like video game sound effects. I feel like this is the band’s mature face - the bizarre samples and quirkiness is still there, but pushed back in the mix. Picture the Notwist, but having fun and you’d be fairly approximating tracks like “Dancing Behind My Eyelids”.
All in all, I am astounded by the progressiveness of this release. From almost dreading putting the album in my stereo to wanting to listen to it, on repeat, late into the night… I have been converted. Of course, it goes without saying that the album will find itself played much more often come wintertime but hey, at least that gives me something to look forward to, come Quebec’s infamous snowstorms.
with toques:
múm - A Little Bit, Sometimes.
múm - They Made Frogs Smoke ’til They Exploded.
The record officially drops on September 24th, 2007 from FatCat Records. While you patiently wait & eat sno-cones, you can do some further investigation over at the band’s myspace or on their beautiful but confusing official web-site (which is, really, one of the classiest things I have ever seen).
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