Smilewound

Description

Sixth studio album by Icelandic electronica collective Múm.

Feat. the song Whistle, a collaboration between pop-princess Kylie Minogue and múm, the main song in 2012 movie Jack & Diane.

You dont need to be Freud to regard teeth as a delicate issue. They can make joy look joyous and pain look painful, and on the cover of the new múm album they do both at the same time. As Yesterday Was Dramatic Today Is Okay (2001), Finally We Are No One (2002) and Sing Along To Songs You Dont Know (2009) Smilewound is another example of the bands art of juxtaposing two conflicting meanings and taking advantage of the energy created through the tension between both. Sparser in sound than many of its predecessors, Smilewound is an airy, relaxed record.

The múm-core-duo of Örvar Smárason and Gunni Tynes doesnt make you laugh out loud (except maybe for the quirky vintage Arcade-sound-start of When Girls Collide), but it will make you smile often despite the heavenly voices singing about violence in one form or another in most songs. Musically, múms capability to build playful electronic sound-ornaments around simple melodies is in full bloom. And these days they know that trimming the ornamentation can strengthen the melody. Take The Colorful Stabwound: an aguish drumnbass piece and Smilewound gets close to a straight pop-song. Even that isnt very close, but it combines its rhythmic strength with a simple yet effective piano-line and the soothing lushness of a female voice to something compelling that follows you like the smell of a delicate eau de toilette. Or Candlestick which started out as a little ditty strummed on an acoustic guitar many years ago and has grown into this bouncy piece of synth-pop that changes its musical colours every couple of beats until you feel comfortably dizzy. Perfect pop in very fancy clothes. No wonder that antipodean pop-princess Kylie Minogue wanted to collaborate with múm on the Whistle, the main song in 2012-movie Jack & Diane.

Recorded in, among other places, the bands practice-space, an old baltic farmhouse and on the kitchen-table after dinner, the album was produced by múm themselves. And being the revolving collective they are, it comes as no surprise that we see the return of former member Gyda Valtýsdóttir. Defining satellites as part of the core fits nicely with the bands penchant for ambivalence in fact thats part of the albums charm.

Heavy cardboard gatefold cover and printed inner sleeves. Includes download.