Múm
Please Smile My Noise Bleed
(Morr Music)
It was just earlier this year that Múm made their debut with the very excellent album Yesterday Was Dramatic, Today Is OK, and within less than a year, they've also released a remix album (available on Fat Cat), as well as this 9-track CD of 3 new tracks (or 2 new tracks and one interlude as the packaging states) and 6 more remixes (including 5 of the same song) of those tracks. While a majority of the time it does work, there are times on the disc where you feel like you've already heard the track before (and indeed you have).
The album begins with the two original tracks and they're everything that you've come to expect from the group. "On The Old Mountain Radio" twinkles along with a light nursery rhyme feel and the subtle percussion that the group had mastered on their last release while "Please Sing My Spring Reverb" is a slight bit more rough-around-the-edges, with all kinds of gurgling sounds that bubble up around the pretty melodies, as well as a touch of light vocals.
Besides the other short new "interlude" of "Flow Not So Fast Old Mountain Radio" (which really is sort of an afterthought at just over a minute long), the remainder of the album features remixes, mainly by artists on the Morr Music label. While artists like Styrofoam and Christian Kleine turn in decent reworkings that change elements up slightly, it's others that make things even more interesting. Phonem turns the once bubbly track into something much darker, keeping the vocals as a ghostly chorus while pumping up the percussion into something menacing.
The short album closes out nicely, as Arovane (under the guise of AMX) cranks up the BPMs slightly and reworks the track as something much less sleepy (although it's hardly a dancefloor track), while B. Fleischmann strips things down to beautiful vocals and a simply light melody floating over some rough-edged rhythm. In all, it's a nice 45 minutes, but not nearly as good as their debut album Yesterday Was Dramatic, Today Is OK. Part of that reason is probably that there simply wasn't enough source material to work from (there are basically 6 different versions of one song of the 9 tracks). Despite a couple breaks from the mold, the disc feels very uniform in sound, and while that's not necessarily a bad thing, it makes me wonder what Múm will do with their sound next. It's melodic and definitely nice to listen to, but it does leave you wanting a bit more.
Rating: 7
