Review:

on 2009-09-28 musicslave Said:

I am an avid Mum fan, I seem to be under the impression that any piece of music that floats of Iceland is a beautiful work of art and on my all time top album list. However, with that said, this is not mum, but it is?

When original singer Kria Brekkan left the band to move to the states and get married to Animal Colective singer Avey Tare, the sound changed, and that is understandable, Mums last album with her was incredibley bleak and sad. Their follow up album "Go Go Smear the Poison Ivy" was a departure, but it maintained some wonderfull early mum type sounds, and to me, was one of the best albums to date.

With all this said, they dropped their synths, midi controllers and drum machines for the most part, and recorded a somber "live" instrument album with the exception of a couple songs, but even the songs they added a quarky beat or synth line to feel a bit out of place in their catalog and on this album. Mum to me is one of the all time great bands, along with Sigur Ros and Bjork, who of course all hail from Iceland, but it seems that there is a trend with the bands that are gaining popularity over there, and that is the off sounds and musical creation that made them all poluar in the first place is being replaced but standerd indi music rock fare. I have no problems with evolution, it is essential to an artist and I never want the artist to duplicate their last album by any means, so with that said while I think Mums album "sing along to songs you dont know" is a good album, and one that I will be listeing to heavely this fall, it also stands out to me as an album that almost any indi band could have crafted, simply replace Mum with a multitude of names, and you wouldnt even know.

Now onto the songs themselves, it is not that they are slower, some of their music has always been abit slow, but no, now instead of blips and bleeps, rhodes and soft synths creating the landscape, we have dulcimers, guitars, real drums and gasp normal sounding vocals, which to me tend to sound abit like the polyphonic spree, in which 10 people are singing on every track, and makes me feel a bit mad for some reason. Needles to say, "prophecies and reversed memories", "a river dont stop to breathe" and "the last shades of never" did captivate me. "Sing Along" and "The smell of today is like sweet breastmilk in the wind" tried to incorporate some of their more succesfull instrumentaion into quarky electronic numbers, and they are semi succesfull at that. "Illuminated" is a fine song, and to me should have ended the album. The rest of the album, especially the songs "Hullasjohsfh...and kaykauyafauoida...." yeah, figure out the spelling, just bother me, chanting gibberish fine, but again slightly annoying. I miss the days of the old Mum, and though they never will be back, this band that slightly resembles them is a nice addition to the music scene, but alas, not a satisfactory replacement to the music that will be missed. My hope is that Kria and the original members will get back togther and create a mini ep someday to give us fans a bit of what got us into them into the first place. All in all, purchase this album,and maybe I am partial, and all the new fans they will gather from this will dislike the older stuff and argue with this review, in any event, it is an album worth your coin.
Rating: 6/10