Múm | Finally We Are No One | music review

by Kris   ⋅   November 2, 2005   ⋅   Comment now   ⋅    RSS

Every so often, Tinkerbell® smokes out and pays me a visit via accidental melodies. Zippers clinking in the dryer, garbage trucks’ reverse warnings, tunnel vent floe flows. There was a phase in my life where all I wanted to listen to was my laundry machine, Sunday morning birds, the beach, and maybe Autechre. Múm takes me back to that place, full of optimistic beeps and whispered poetic to-do lists: “Nightly Cares / The Ghosts You Draw On My Back / Stir / Sing Me Out The Window“.

The Icelandic quartet’s Finally We Are No One offers a whirlwind of “tripping feet” clumsy drums (programmed of course), seraphim-like vocals, robotic purrs/coos, distant collating xeroxes, alternating intermittent violin and accordian wails and singular calliope toots. For example, Behind Two Hills.. a Swimming Pool’s one minute eight second languid bubble machine blends with a psuedo harpischord. A bit tinny, but oh-so cute, like a stop-animation minature submarine ride through a tub of fluffy white frosting. In fact, it does play much like a Jan Švankmajer animation. Comfortably eerie and odd, mechanical yet humanistic in its familiar sounds — the beauty in redundancy. The avid lucidity in ceasing to overlook what is normally taken for granted.

Mostly instrumental, highly interpretational, barely intelligible, Múm is not for everyone, but if you also love accidental music, Finally We Are No One may be a big treat.

About the Author:

Kris Kobayashi-Nelson will listen to anything once. Her favorites include Cocteau Twins, Cardigans, Mixel Pixel, Deerhoof, Fiona Apple, Portishead, Sneakerpimps, Sonny Rollins, the Pixies, Autechre… but she has been known to groove to footfalls through November leaves, zipper pulls in the dryer, or ice clinking in a Summer glass.