múm – Go Go Smear the Poison Ivy (Fat Cat, 2007)
Despite the seemingly ever shifting line-up and specific musical avenue that múm trods upon, it’s able to sustain an ever expanding international following. But that’s the power of intelligent music (not intelligent dance music). Like every other band this millennium, múm defies categorization, incorporating seemingly unmusical elements and instruments into the complex arrangements of its songs. What this album does that past efforts have not, is to smooth out the electronic elements and create a more generally palatable disc. The recent and populist reverence lent to Piazzolla is found on “A Little Bit, Sometimes”, but also recalls pleasant enough childhood moments. The one throw back presents itself in the form of “Dancing Behind My Eyelids”, which possesses enough heavy handed drum programming to please any devout electro-fan. Most of this offering though sounds less paranoid than “Eyelids” and in fact often sounds almost organic, save for the fact that the instrumentation is of course anything but. The lead off track blossoms with a light melody and the pleasing tones of Eastern percussion. Die-hards rejoice, skeptics may nitpick, but there’s enough creative forethought on Go Go to make the album an appropriate, more gentle and mature re-working of a style that is definitively múm.
