MÚM
Sing Along To Songs You Don’t Know
MORR092
Morr Music 2009
12 Tracks. 49mins10secs

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Things have changed quite drastically since Múm landed on TMT Entertainment in 2001 with the hugely poetic and overly electronic Yesterday Was Dramatic, Today Is OK album, and the remix album that followed. The band was formed by Gunnar Örn Tynes, Örvar Þóreyjarson Smárason toward the end of the nineties, and shortly after, twin sisters Kristín Anna and Gyða Valtýsdóttir joined them. Since, the band has gone through many changes. In 2002, Gyða left, followed a couple of years later by Kristín, leaving Tynes and Smárason to head a constantly changing line up, until the current one came together to record  Go Go Smear The Poison Ivy, released on Fat-Cat in 2007. The album signalled quite a radical shift in musical direction as Múm appeared to leave their delicate electronic textures behind in favour of a much more acoustic sound, not that far apart from the magical kingdom of Danish ensemble Efterklang.

Sing Along To Songs You Don’t Know, Múm’s fifth album and their first for German imprint Morr Music since the 2001 mini album Please Smile My Noise Bleed, continues pretty much where Go Go Smear The Poison Ivy left off, focussing once again on deceptively naive pop songs, alive with rich sounds, catchy melodies and heart-warming harmonies. Very much like with its predecessor, Múm draw from a multitude of instruments (guitars, prepared piano, ukulele, marimba, strings, dulcimer) to create a beautiful and evocative layered sounds where sub melodies constantly add to the core structure of a piece, occasionally highlighting a point or giving out a vivid glow to a particular melody or instrument.

The album starts with the surrealist and poetic If I Were A Fish, on which the band create a warm campfire song feel and juxtapose brushes of slide guitars and earthy brass slabs. Sing Along, which follows, continues on a similar mood but also sees the band bringing electronics back in. Later, A River Don’t Stop To Breathe, Illuminated or Blow Your Nose make beautiful use of the string quartet by giving it a central place, especially on the latter, adding delicate marimbas and piano touches to accentuate the pastoral feel of the respective pieces. Prophecies And Reversed Memories or the magnificent Húllabbalabbalúú and Kay-Ray-Kú-Kú-Kó-Kex are pivotal moments on this record, the former signalling a momentary change of pace, the latter two, with their underwhelming rolling anthemic melodic themes never cease to grow through their respective courses. Although very different, these three songs seem to focalize the cinematic breadth of Múm like never before.

Elsewhere, the band draw on subtle traditional folk forms on The Last Shapes Of Never to once again reiterate the bucolic aspect of the record, teeming with life, vivid colours and rich sound, before closing the proceedings with the darker and reflective Ladies Of The New Century. The only true faux-pas of this record is to be found on the rather tedious and gimmicky The Smell Of Today Is Sweet Like Breast Milk In The Wind, which crushes the lyrical spell of this record half-way through. Sounding totally out of place and irrelevant with its over-active cheap drum machine hammered over a somewhat weak melody, it is best skipped entirely.

Unlike its predecessor, Sing Along To Songs You Don’t Know is something of a slow burner, which takes its time to reveal its many facets. Múm never quite reach the heights of Go Go Smear The Poison Ivy, but it is fair to say that it never feels as if that it their main preoccupation. Initially a tad lacklustre, especially in its first half, this album still finds Múm in exquisite musical grounds and sees them continuing to mature steadily.

4/5

Múm | Múm (MySpace) | Morr Music
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Following the departure of Kristin Anna Valtýsdóttir, gone to marry Avey Tare a couple of years ago, Múm founding members Gunnar Örn Tynes and Örvar Þóreyjarson Smárason rounded a few long term friends and, as a sextet, went on to record their most joyful and flamboyant record with Go Go Smear The Poison Ivy. Here, we caught up with the pair during their current tour to talk about dealing with Kristin’s departure and the ever-changing nature of the band, how the new album came to life, working on satellite projects and beans on toast.

The new album is just out. Is it a stressful time for you with all the promotion, waiting to find out how it is received by critics and by the public, or is it more a relief to have the project done and dusted?

Of course it is always very fulfilling to finish an album, but it was pretty much completed in autumn last year, so that’s a long time ago and your mind starts to wander into thinking about the next recordings and next album.

In 2005, Kristin Anna Valtýsdóttir left the band. How did you deal with her decision? Did you have doubts on whether you would continue as Múm?

No, we never had any doubts about keeping on, we had already started recording the album and it was going fine. It was more just a good thing to sharpen what was going on for us anyway. It’s always good to move on.

How did the new band come together? What were you looking for in the musicians you wanted for the band?

Well most of them have been playing with us on and off for a long time. It was more just a feeling of getting people to step up. We are all really good friends and that makes it easiest. The only person who is completely new is Silla and she fell into the whole group on the first day.

With seven people in the band now, has it changed the dynamic a lot in the way how songs come together and how they are written? Was that a very natural process or did you have to change the way you work radically?

Eiríkur and Samuli wrote many of the songs with us and that was a great experience. It did open things up more. But we keep our natural process of working still and we could never really define what that is anyway.

You recently said in a recent interview that it is in the nature of the band to keep changing. Do you see this as a natural evolution?

We have never pushed any changes…. they just happen. We have never made the same album twice and we are lucky that we have never had to put any effort into that not happening. And with the people side of things, we come from a background and a community of bands that keep changing and interacting with each other and most of us have played in many different projects together before and still do.

Go Go Smear The Poison Ivy is a much happier and upbeat record than what you have released in the past. Were you conscious of this when recording?

It is a lighter and a more open album, that’s very true. It wasn’t so much of a decision as something that was unavoidable for us. We can’t get much darker than Summer Make Good. Well, maybe we can… yes on second thought I wouldn’t like to exclude that possibility either.

You record your albums mostly in Iceland. Is it important for you to be home when recording?

No. We usually travel around when we record. We don’t stay around in the same place much. The reason it happens in Iceland is that it is often quite simple to find a place and it’s easy to get people to the recordings. We did record a part of this album in Finland and we are sure to do that again.

In 2002, you released a version of Finally We Are No-one which was all sung in Icelandic. What did you think it brought to the project, and would you ever consider do something like that again?

Hmmmm, yes we did that just as a simple experiment or just to see if that was for us. To tell the truth people in Iceland have never been that much into our music and the Icelandic version was mostly bought by people outside of Iceland as a novelty. I don’t feel a special pressure to make our music more acceptable to Icelanders, the politics of the music press there are so complicated that it would be a full time job to get into the good books.

You partly recorded in a music school in a small town in the west of Iceland, using the school’s instruments. Was it your intention to use only the school’s instruments, and how did it work out in the end?

Our intention was never to record in that school at all, we went to this town to find a place to record and then we almost started recording in a fishing factory, but then we got a no from the factory owner. That would have been horrible anyway because of the cold and the noise, but out of nowhere we suddenly had the keys for the music school. The people in Ísafjörður are just so warm and amazing.

Örvar and Gunnar, you have produced a few remixes over the years, the most recent ones were a couple of tracks by Goldfrapp. How do you approach that kind of work, and how do you decide to remix a particular track?

That’s another question I can’t give you a straight answer to. Ha ha, sorry about that. I don’t really know, our lives are often quite chaotic. We had fun working on the Goldfrapp songs, but we haven’t really done as many in the last few years as before. And we haven’t been doing as many as we would maybe like to.

You also worked on a commission from the Holland Festival to create a piece based around the work of Iannis Xenakis with the National Dutch Chamber Orchestra. How did you work on this? Was this a very different approach to music, and how did you feel about the finished work? Will you ever perform it again?

It was a great experience in every way. We worked in the music hall for about a week, we got a great room for it and it is very good for us to explore a very new way of working. Playing with the orchestra was a rewarding time and inspired new things for the album.

Some years ago, you provided the music for your version of the soundtrack of Sergei Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin, which you performed in Iceland and a few other places. How did you get involved with this project, and how did it differ from working on one of your records?

We had done a lot of improvisations to different silent films and when we were asked to write a new score to a film of our choice and record it, we just welcomed it. We ended up picking Potemkin, because it seemed like the film it would be the hardest for us to compose to and it turned out to be right. The rhythm of the film is so difficult to work with and the atmosphere in the film itself has so many hidden layers. And then you need to work it out in a historical sense as well. We were never going to make something similar to the many early soundtracks by Meisel and Shostakovich for example.

Would you consider working on another soundtrack, and for which kind of film?

Sure we are very open to that. Maybe we could do shorter soundtracks to early animation films. That has been something we have wanted to do for a while.

The artwork for the new single and album and the video for They Made Frogs Smoke ‘Til They Exploded were created by Ingibjörg Birgisdóttir and DLT. Do you see this as part of the overall project? Do you attach a lot of importance to what your records and videos look like?

Yes, it is a part of the whole thing. We have mostly worked on the artwork ourselves for our albums, but this time we gave the whole thing to our old and good friend Inga and we always knew she would make something as amazing as she did. Everything she puts her hands on turns into gold.

You are just starting touring with the new album. What can people expect to see on stage?

We have been touring it for a while now and it is for sure our most enjoyable album to play live. I don’t want to tell people what to expect, that’s none of my business, but I would like to bid every one welcome to come and see it for themselves.

You are currently scheduled to tour until the end of December. How do you deal with being away from home for so long?

It gets tiring sometimes, but you turn into part robot, part travelling minstrel. All in all it’s very fun and it’s great to be around your friends. But it’s hard to miss someone who is back at home.

What is next for Múm?

More touring, more music, more albums, more things we don’t know about. More beans on toast and more damp pillows that smell like rhubarb.

Múm | Fat-Cat Records

Go Go Smear The Poson Ivy is out now, and the single Marmalade Fires is out on 17 December on Fat-Cat Records
Email interview with Gunnar Örn Tynes and Örvar Þóreyjarson Smárason, November 2007

MÚM
Go Go Smear The Poison Ivy
FATCD46 / FATCD46LTD / FATLP46
Fat-Cat Records 2007
14 Tracks. 44mins05secs

The topography of Icelandic outfit Múm is as chaotic and unpredictable as that of their native island. From the band’s early days as a quartet dealing primarily with crystalline electronica to vastly acoustic landscapes explored as a trio, to their most recent incarnation, as an enchanted seven-piece ensemble. Following the departure of singer Kristín Anna Valtýsdóttir in early 2005, founding members Gunnar Örn Tynes and Örvar Þóreyjarson Smárason focused on a commission by the Holland Festival, working on a performance piece based on the work of avant-garde composer Iannis Xenakis with the National Dutch Chamber Orchestra. Both Tynes and Smárason also spent time working on various side projects, including a solo album for the former, under the name of Illi Vill, and writing for the latter.

Now counting no less than five new members, including friends Ólöf Arnalds on violin, viola, guitar and vocals, Eiríkur Orri Olafsson on trumpet, pianette and moog, Hildur Gudnadottir on cello and vocals, multi-instrumentist and vocalist Mr.Silla, and drummer and percussionist Samuli Kosminen, originally from Finland, Múm have created with Go Go Smear The Poison Ivy their most colourful and contrasted piece of work. The delicate arrangements and breathless female vocals have been replaced with chaotic, yet ambitious, orchestrations and strong vocal parts. Recent single They Made Frogs Smoke Til They Exploded illustrates the shift in the band’s sound. Kicking off with a childish sing-song, gritty electronics and a harmonica, the song rapidly gains body as a thundery drum and quirky male/female vocals pave the way for the full formation to be set in motion. Opening song Blessed Brambles is equally as spellbinding in its varied ornamental instrumentation and melodic flourishes. The moving melody on Dancing Behind My Eyelids, perhaps the most openly pop moment here, curls around a subtle typewriter beat and surprising Gaelic arabesques, only interrupted by a discharge of Aphex-like electronics in its latter part.

Elsewhere, the mood is more restrained. Whether it is on the superb Moon Pulls, with its voluptuous dark swathes of piano and occasional plucked or strummed acoustic guitar providing a stunning backdrop for the main melody, or on Rhuubardidoo, which sounds like a long forgotten piece taken from The Magic Roundabout and played by the Beatles circa Sergeant Pepper, or on the mournful I Was Her Horse, Múm constantly juggle between ornate melancholy and tender psychedelia. And on Guilty Rocks, they are caught red handed playfully revisiting, or so it seems, a fraction of Grieg’s Peer Gynt Suite. The album comes to a close with the magnificent Winter (What We Never Were After All), which, with piano undertones, vast choir formation and achingly perfect melody, sounds like Ennio Morricone taking on the sub-arctic Icelandic landscape.

All this however doesn’t go against what Tynes and Smárason spent years perfecting with the Valtýsdóttir sisters. If anything, the band’s original vision is reinforced by the rich sonic landscapes in which their songs are left to wander these days. Very much like Efterklang’s wonderful Parades, Go Go Smear The Poison Ivy is an intensely poetic and fascinating record. It is like Múm have finally become the festive orchestra they were always meant to be.

4.7/5

Múm | Fat-Cat Records
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AVEY TARE & KRÍA BREKKAN
Pullhair Rubeye
PAW015
Paw Tracks 2007
08 Tracks. 31mins33secs

In 1975, Lou Reed, already established as the hippest rock star of his time, released a double-album of atonal, feedback-drenched, amelodic noise, entitled Metal Machine Music. In the years since, the reasons behind the creation and release of the album continue to be heavily debated: was he trying to escape a record contract? Did he wish to alienate his audience? Or was he just trying something new, and screw what the teenyboppers thought? In time, MMM became a genesis record for noise musicians who, unlike most listeners and critics at the time, actually took it seriously.

Now it’s 2007. The music landscape is different from 1975, but in many ways it’s also the same; this is to say, an artist really going out there and experimenting – as innocent as it may be in intention – can still shock and upset its core audience, no matter how open-minded they were thought to be. First, a quick bit of background is necessary: Avey Tare (aka Dave Portner, of freak-folkies Animal Collective) and his wife Kría Brekkan (aka Kristín Anna Valtýsdóttir, formerly of twee glitch makers Múm) made an album of indie folk tunes. Then, influenced by equal parts odd weather and David Lynch’s Inland Empire, the couple decided to release the album backwards. Every song, start to finish, played backwards, plucks turning to sweeps, vocals lost in a sea of a new, ephemeral language (from which the songs get their titles). Like Lynch’s Empire, Pullhair Rubeye has had a polarizing effect on those who experience it, mostly because people either can’t seem to figure out (or are unsatisfied with the answer provided) why Tare and Brekkan decided to go this route.

The only option left to consider, however, is that there really, truly, isn’t a deeply reasoned answer as to why the album is back masked. In releasing it this way, however, Tare and Brekkan lay claim to the first truly and purely experimental recording in the history of either’s output. Pullhair is not simply pop or folk with experimental overtones and interludes; rather, it is a simple and complete experimental deconstruction of those more traditional song forms. By listening to these songs in such an unfamiliar format, the listener cannot take anything for granted – every breath, every strum, and every pluck swims by as a series of brief crescendos. Nothing is familiar, at least not until after a few listens, as Pullhair challenges listeners weaned on traditional song craft to learn about music again.

Inevitably on a backwards album, the vocals play a different role. Tare and Brekkan’s hushed singing is not telling a story, but rather painting a sonic picture. While the idea of reducing vocals to a lyric-free instrument isn’t new – see Belinda Butcher on My Bloody Valentine’s Loveless – it works especially well to illustrate the contrast between Tare’s soft, aching chant and Brekkan’s bird-like, whimsical singing. Despite the absence of discernable lyrics, the vocals still manage to affect a series of themes and emotions upon the listener, from the springtime of Osip Helpus to the childish Sasong. Indeed, just as playing the song backwards manages to impress upon the listener a sense of greater importance and purpose, the back masked vocals further expand the potential lyrical themes. Like Sigur Ros’s singing in the made-up ‘Hopelandish’ language, the vocals here become lyrical chameleons, adopting different meanings according to the environment in which they are listened to. The same line here can be a joyous celebration, or a mournful reflection.

In the end, it all comes back to Metal Machine Music. Even today, the album is able to alienate 99.9% of those who listen to it – yet it has been reissued more extensively than any other album in Reed’s solo catalogue. Over time, enough truly adventurous spirits have come to appreciate it as an album that flipped Reed’s rock n’ roll styling on its head, even if it was also a mickey. Hopefully, Pullhair, with its backwards recording a simultaneous statement of revolution and afterthought, will influence contemporaries and followers to take the chance and fully see beyond the confines of traditional structure.

5/5

Paw Tracks
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MÚM
The Peel Session
CDFAT057 / 12FAT057
Fat-Cat Records 2006
04 Tracks.21mins14secs

Icelandic purveyors of fine dream soundtracks Múm fill the gap between their last record, released two years ago, and their next opus, due out next year, with the publication of their sole Peel Session, recorded at the world famous BBC Maida Vale studios back in 2002 following the release of their debut album, Yesterday Was Dramatic, Today Is OK. The session captures the band as they begin to blur the boundaries between their electronic roots and the more delicate acoustic and textural sound they have showcased in recent years. Here, while they still largely rely on electronics, as the opening sequence of Scratched Bicycle/Smell Memory attests, Múm dress their songs in slightly more contrasted tones.

Múm have developed a stage persona which has progressively been infiltrating their records, and this early testament clearly documents how the band’s sound lends itself perfectly to the live environment. The melodies retain the fresh envelop of the original versions yet the arrangements appear fuller and more ethereal, while the voices of twin sisters Gyða and Kristín Anna Valtýsdóttir take on a much more vaporous and dreamy turn on Now There Is That Fear Again. As they combine electronic and acoustic instrumentation into tight soundscapes, Múm draw a series of sonic arabesques which contrast greatly with the more subdued originals. On the opening track, which pertinently brings two songs into one, Múm layer slices of glitches and noises over frenetic interferences and beats, yet the main melody floats well above, and when liberated from the cloud of ambient hums and buzzes, develops into a wonderfully strolling piece. Awake On A Train is a more straightforward and pastoral installment, with gentle vocals set against sharp electronics while an accordion traces a series of melodic themes and takes this track in a variety of directions.

Now There Is That Fear Again is the most elaborate track on here, with multiple layers of accordion dripping over the sisters’ vocals, guitars and live drums to form a vivid organic piece. The song’s gentle opening moments reveal a rich backdrop which flourishes further as the track progresses and more layers are applied. The Ballad Of The Broken String finds the band in more subdued and reflective mood and brings this all too short Peel session to a beautiful close.

Explore: Múm | Fat-Cat Records
Further readings: Múm on Wikipedia | Múm:web
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