Múm
Summer Make Good

THE REVIEW

The collision of the meteorite “cosmic rock” by Tangerine Dream on the metropolitan-sound area of Bristol has caused such an impact that it deflected the Earth's rotation axis and provoked a new ice age observable at latitudes that barely touch the Arctic Circle... this parabolic game of historicization can give an imaginative idea of the music that FatCat groups manage to create, and ironically underscores the importance of comparison terms to frame proposals that are "elusive" for various reasons.

Something similar happened towards the end of the '80s, when another Icelandic band, Sykurmolarnyr, later renamed Sugarcubes, released a hybrid and undefinable postmodern punk-pop work (oblique keyboards, female vocals plus “disturbing” male recitative, influences ranging from dream pop to certain electronics) entitled “Life’s Too Good”. Considering the subsequent evolution of these peripheral scenarios “compared to the London-New York axis” (Alberto Campo), one might perhaps retrospectively "read" the work produced by these atypical artists by paraphrasing a political slogan "think globally, act locally": translated into music this means “enclosing” one's local reality within the context of “universal” musical forms and structures, or at least partly derived from Anglo-American models. An aspect that is in its own way significant is the edition of Múm's previous work “Finally We Are No One” in dual language: English and Icelandic.

The soft bitstream, at times flowing like certain techno-trance of Biosphere “viewed in slow motion”, liquid and slowed down to the freeze-frame, invests the elastic off-beat cadence of certain trip-hop “à la Lamb-Portishead” (like “Glory Box” last 30 seconds or “Cowboys” opening), or from the dub-electronic of bands like Audio Active: this is most evident in the percussive parts. Even though it’s deliberately impossible to distinguish between what's played, sampled, or (re)created in the studio, the effect counts: the synesthetic suggestion (“listening” seems to “see” grassy blankets, glaciers, and puddles), the aesthetic minimalism (no big themes: titles like “don’t be afraid, you have just closed your eyes” or “between two hills a mirror of water”…), enveloped by a rarefied atmospheric environment (Brian Eno and various epigones plus a sort of “Pagan Poetry” less majestically lyrical and more subtly graceful), and an impressionist portrait of the light gradations throughout the day on Icelandic landscapes, piercing and coloring the clouds, projecting shadows and glittering on the sea, obtained with Bjork's “boreal hyper ballads” combined with a sweet and soft low-fi melodic palette.

These delicate en plein air portraits of external scenarios covered with the most intimate emotions form an involuntary minimalist and almost autobiographical concept, in the manner of a secret diary: “Summer Make Good” actually sounds sadder and more introspective than previous records (“Abandoned Ship Bells”, “Away”), and the drumming, more decisive and dynamic than before, marks its suffering passages more, as in “Whiping Rock Rock” and “Nightly Cares”.

“The horizon is in the mirror, the horizon is within me” … however, emotionally set in the mood of a delicate, collected, and melancholic anticipation of the next season…