Search - Mum :: Summer Make Good

Music for fog

David Andrus | Santa Rosa, CA | 11/18/2004

(4 out of 5 stars)

"I was disappointed with this album on first listen. I was knocked over by the depth and emotional intensity of "Finally we are no one" and after seeing the band perform several of the new tracks live prior to the release of "summer" I was expecting another 5 star release. While the band (minus one) have not quite reached the pinnacle of their previous effort, this record is subtly brilliant in it's own right. It creates a darker sense of romanticism and is not marked as much by the idyllic naivete that made the first and second records so charming. Gone are most of the pretty melodies, and the carefully built to crescendo arrangements. What remains is fragmented, misty, and somehow mildly disturbing. Given that it was recorded at a lighthouse, this imagery starts to make sense. The songs are very manipulated (and only vaguely resembling their "live" versions) - altered significantly from their acoustic form, and always peppered by a kind of digital "fog"; shifting, creaking, bending sounds that give the record it's atmosphere. I managed to pop it in on a particularly foggy northern california day and this is the perfect way to hear it."

More Yesterday Was Dramatic / Less Finally We Are No One

katahdin | New York, United States | 07/26/2004

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Mum come from Iceland where there are more people than trees and apparently more talented musicians than people.



The running theory goes that because so much of the year is perpetual twighlight due to the nation's proximity to the arctic circle, that there is a consistent vibe in all the music coming out of the place. This vibe is apparently heavily influenced by a sort of hoovering between night and day and by extension, between dreaming and waking.



Anyway, Mum embodies this better than any other Icelandic group to me. They are pure magic. They'll sample the sound of ice melting and make a song out of it... and it's good.



Then they loop their voices in a way that makes you sure that you've heard them singing in a dream sometime when you were a child or perhaps in a film strip they made you watch in grammar school that tickled you into daydream that melted fluidly into naptime.



Finally We Are No One (2nd albumn) is more melodic and has more elaborate instrumentation than Summer Make Good (3rd albumn) or Yesterday Was Dramatic, Today is Okay (1st) which are both more rythmic.



I prefer their gently haunting melodies to their mystically vibrating rythm pieces... but that's just me.



If Julie Cruise singing Angelo Badalamenti's songs had a baby with Music for Films era Brian Eno and that baby was allowed to play with Bjork's Drum Machine... you'd start to approximate Mum.

"

Mummie Dearest

HeidiKakes | NY | 07/27/2004

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Why are Icelandic musicans so creative? With the exception of Beastie Boy-ripoffs Quarashi, musicians in Iceland just seem to do things right. From Sigur Ros to Bjork to Mum, they just know how to invoke emotions hidden deep inside like no other. Maybe it's because of the cold, sterile nature of their surroundings they feel a need to explore and communicate through the warmth of emotive, intelligent music. Or maybe there's just something in the water over there. Either way, Mum's new album Summer Make Good is a gorgeous voyage through the oceans of serenity.



Summer Make Good opens with "Hu Viss - A Ship" and "Weeping Rock, Rock," a song reminscent of Godspeed You! Black Emperor's Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas To Heaven and sets the pace for rest of the album-ominous and brooding yet offering a small ray of light. This anchor of hope is provided by Kristin Anna Valtysdottir's tender vocals moving in and out like small waves of tranquility while treacherous floods capsize you to the ocean floor.



It's no coincidence these songs sound more like melancholic water lullabies than the jubilant ditties found on Finally We Are One and Yesterday Was Dramatic Today Was Ok. The songs were written in a remote lighthouse in Galtarviti and then recorded in an empty weather station and a lightkeeper's cabin below another lighthouse. Sounds from these eerie locations are dispersed throughout Summer Make Good creating a level of natural atmospheric bliss amongst spectral electronics.



While Valtysdottir does sing partially in English and Icelandic, like fellow Icelandic musicians, Jonsi Birgisson of Sigur Ros and Bjork, there is no need to know what is actually being said. The vocals are used more as an instrument than as a poetic device. Emotions are evoked without any sad tales of broken hearts and slashed wrists-just soft whispers spoken in the most innocent, delicate soprano voice.

"