fatandconfused

Is the new Múm album really so bad?

Múm – Go Go Smear the Poison Ivy (FatCat)

I’ve been quite surprised to see how badly the new album from Icelandic (currently) septet Múm, described on the reliable Silent Ballet website as follows:

“let's just say this is one to put on the shelf and watch it collect dust…this album fails at accomplishing any sort of goal, and even raises the question if one exists in the first place. There's an anxiety behind the track, and many others that really prevents anything from being carried out completely. Thoughts are left completely abandoned, mid-sentence, and rarely do we see anything fleshed out to form any sort of understandable statement.”

Rating it at a measly 3 out of 10, it seems that there has been further negativity towards the album from other reliable sources and so it’s with caution that I stick my neck out, that I pipe up above the crowds and ask “Is it really that bad?” I started this fanzine in paper format initially with the idea of promoting good music, sharing with people music that I have fallen in love with, hence why you will normally find just positive reviews on here, I see no point in telling people what I don’t like, what’s disappointed me. For one of the first times though I feel that I could be wrong, how can there be so much disdain for an album that I have loved from the very first listen to now where new songs keep popping out into the foreground, is it because although having the Múm back catalogue I’ve never given it the time I imagine it deserves, yes I loved Green Grass of Tunnel but really who didn’t? maybe those devout followers were expecting something more spectacular, something more progressive and I’ll admit that at times the timid production does sound like that of a band debut opposed to their fourth/fifth (?) album but to me that adds a certain Icelandic magical charm to it, the delicate icy frozen nature of the twinkling lullaby’s within are made that little bit more childlike and naïve, slowly tip toeing through the snow on cold winters nights.

Perhaps it’s the new line up, after all now not only one of the twins that famously graced Belle & Sebastian’s Fold Your Hands album cover have left the band, with Kristín Anna Valtýsdóttir following her sisters footsteps departing at some point in 2006. It was her voice that alongside the electronic glitches, beats and effects, and the variety of traditional and unconventional instruments that made the band’s sound so distinct. So now we have the inclusion of more prominent male vocals not too distant from those of the excellent Mice Parade and particularly on the Books-ian cut up glitch of single They Made Frogs Smoke ‘Til They Exploded the much missed synth pop of Kanda. Marmalade Fires are what the Delgados would’ve sounded like had they purchased a laptop rather than split up. Dancing Behind My Eyelids is again lovely and playful, again reminding us of Kanda and mixing amstrad-esque loading screens with truly delightful melodies. School Song Misfortune is again naïve and playful like some strange childhood dream sequence, lullaby’s for an Icelandic kindergarten.

The closing triplet of songs are somewhat more somber and melancholy in sound, and perhaps those will please long term fans, mainly instrumental and occasionally haunting, particularly so the dense and dark forest walk in the middle of the night that is I Was Her Horse. Guilty Rocks is everything you’ve ever read about Stereolab yet down several times better and closer Winter (What We Never Were After All) is again haunting and angelic icy keyboards set to choir like Viking film chorales, delightful and refreshing, as I listen again I can only convince myself further of how special this album is.

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Múm - Dancing Behind My Eyelids MP3

Múm - They Made Frogs Smoke'Til They Exploded MP3

Múm - Moon Pulls MP3

Our Brother The Native – Tooth & Claw (FatCat)

Textile Ranch/ Charles Atlas -  (Static Caravan)

French Teen Idol – Enlightened False Consciousness (Lost Children Net Label)

Three seriously beautiful releases, elegantly textured tapestries of organic prettiness.

Much like by the limitations restricted, the fewer materials on offer, a vegetarian chef tends to conjure up far more interesting dishes than a traditional chef as he utilizes, improvises and gives new meaning and uses to familiar staples in search of something that will both interest and excite the taste buds of the partaker so Our Brother The Native take the hard route to making music. Imagine pre-electricity electronica, like Four Tet with his laptop taken away, simply left with the sounds that surround him from day to day, kindly captured in a box or in the case of Our Brother The Native perhaps a treasure trove would be more appropriate.

These are songs made from a bundle of sounds, birds singing, water running, hands clapping, pans clashing and a collection of samples, mostly of children’s voices used to a similar fine effect as the Boards of Canada, Isan and The Books. On top of this is a brand of peculiar Cocorosie-esque high pitched vocals, and perhaps along with Animal Collective, Cocorosie are as close a comparison as you will find whilst not wishing to take any credit away from what are a seriously unique and creative band, but for music critic/ pigeon-holing’s sake lets just say that if The Books remixed Cocorosie we may end up with something similar and I’m sure if you have any taste in music you’ll realise that that’s far from a bad thing.

Falconiformes, Tilia Petiolaris (the most straight forward, song based song on the album, a beautiful finger picked twin vocaled affair) and particularly the seven minutes of discontent samples set against at times operatic vocals of Octopodidae standout, though if you are looking for a challenging yet rewarding listen there is little that you will be disappointed with here.

I’ve said it time and again but am yet again here reassured that to quite a large extent you can indeed if not judge a book by its cover certainly you can a CD by its. One look at the excellent artwork that accompanies the Textile Ranch and Charles Atlas split and you know already that the CD contained within is likely to contain something rather special and indeed it doesn’t disappoint.

There is something magical about the cover, two girls on swings mid air, one coming up the other going back down against a 1970’s backdrop in some Austrian or Hungarian town that evokes memories of the Brothers Grimm’s fairytales, the state of innocence and total naivety to the horrible things that go on around us and the responsibilities that come with growing up.

Textile Ranch themselves have a magical sound, like Colleen had she been more mischievous, had her twinkling fairy dust tunes had a more urgent feel about them, had they been laced in mischief rather than melancholy, set to charity shop drum machines, flickering in the light like the facets of a diamond, recalling also the magic of State River Widening and many of the early Static Caravan releases like Fortdax and Little Robot Voice. The four tracks here come highly recommended and remind me of why Static Caravan has received so much praise over the years.

Charles Atlas follows a similar route but takes the long and winding roads, the country roads where it doesn’t matter if you want to take your time, if you wish to pull in from time to time to take in the green fields with their solitary trees and endless acres. At times it treads the same water as some of the more glacial post rock out there, pianos, heavily delayed guitars and electronic drums gently compliment each other in a lovely wash of  esoteric sound.

You may be aware of the Lost Children Net Label, a glorious accumulation of free downloads mainly in the form of post rock or at least “instrumental”, instrumental as in the way Sigur Ros qualify as instrumental even though most their songs contain singing. It’s somehow linked to the Silent Ballet website and forum and a blessing beyond anything your preconceived ideas of free music are.

The latest of such free downloads is French Teen Idols Enlightened False Consciousness a lovely album that is as much electronica as it is post rock, full of samples, doomy and apocalyptic yet hope crammed keys and some lovely skittering beats. Disaster samples conversations from flight United 93, respectfully so, and where some people may feel that the very idea of this is wrong I’d have to strongly disagree. Music is a form of art, and an expression of peoples feelings and emotions and I can’t possibly think of a more emotionally charged situation, the result is spectacular.

Compromise Your (He)art is graced with playground chatter and a closing speech from an Indian philosopher that brings to mind the well selected samples of the much underrated The Books. The Fleeting Beauty of a Butterfly is true to its name in its poetic beauty, all slow waves of synthesis and French spoken word samples.

For the majority of the time the album possesses the same unblemished and natural beauty that Johann Johannsson’s IBM Users Manual album displayed so well, the oneness with nature, the slow motion look at a world that holds so much splendour beneath the things that are so often forced to our attention, the bad things that fill the pages of the newspaper, the natural wonder of a butterfly emerging from a cocoon, tracks such as Memento convey such wonder, much how Johann does but perhaps with more of a proclivity for drums and beats.

This is a truly wondrous album and as its free you really have no excuse not to go and download it immediately.
www.myspace.com/ourbrotherthenative
www.myspace.com/fatcatrecords
www.staticcaravan.org/
www.piano-magic.co.uk/textile_ranch/
www.myspace.com/charlesatlasnyc
www.myspace.com/frenchteenidol
www.archive.org/details/LostChildren023
www.frenchteenidol.com/fti.html