"For example," my high school humanities teacher asked when discussing American influence in world culture, "Who knows of any Norwegian bands?" She looked at the foreign exchange student, Joachim.
Jumping to the defense of his homeland, Joachim was quick to point out that a-Ha hailed from Norway. The 17-year-olds in the class looked puzzled: He actually had to explain "Take On Me" to the entirely uninterested class.
But my teacher was right in a way. Who does know any Norwegian bands? They’re probably scary metal bands anyway. Same with Denmark. Scotland? That’s where the whiny indie bands are from. But Iceland—that’s a different stereotypical region altogether.
It began with Björk. Thus the innovative, left-of-center pop music stereotype of Iceland was born. These claims were only confirmed last year when Sigur Rós exploded on to the almost nonexistent market for glacier-guitar music. So, not one year later when Múm released Yesterday Was Dramatic—Today Is OK, not only were they met with critical acclaim, but with Sigur Rós comparisons. Due entirely to their nationality.
However, the comparisons are all weak. If Björk captures the landscape through her montage of digital sampling and cellos, and Sigur Rós capture the atmosphere through the melting, airy, and distant yearns of guitar spectacle, Múm capture the heart of Iceland through careful use of electronica.
Where Sigur Rós takes conventional instrumentation and creates a simultaneously warm and isolated environment, Múm creates an intimacy through unconventional, electronic medium.
Before the mess that was The Geometrid, I made the claim that Looper captured a nostalgic adolescence rarely seen with such cold instruments. Machinery always has that impersonal connotation. If Stuart David and company began Looper as a concept that played out through sloppy and inexperienced instrumentation, Múm are primarily craft-based while tackling similar subject matter—remarkably, without the use of lyrics.
The first track, "I’m 9 Today," is the carefully constructed chaos of a pre-adolescent attention-deficit child. It is led by its percussion—fabricated percussion—of rapid electronic beats underscored by the lullaby of the organ. It is the stuff of which Saturday mornings are made. And not even the Saturday mornings that matter—the ones that exist as a moment of time somehow placed in between a series of Saturdays, so much so that time doesn’t matter. Then the accordion kicks in and we’re left wondering how such a combination of acoustic instrumentation and computers leaves us with warm fuzzies.
The song titles alone express the attempt to beckon back to a time of nostalgia through the senses. This album is the soundtrack to going over to my neighbors’ house simply because they had over 40 Nintendo games. Arguing over a legitimate tag-out in our dirt-lot baseball game. Distinctly remembering the nylon loop of their carpet and the slight vanilla smell that permeated the house, though they never cooked. The "la-la" of "There Is A Number Of Small Things" distill all of Looper’s concept in under a minute. Then Múm continue to build couch cushion forts and collect bottle caps for 47 more minutes.
The seamless marriage of texture and nostalgia portray the inseparable combination of suburban life and gorgeous landscape with which the members of Múm must have grown up. The digital chimes and bloops along with the programmed percussion and soothing horns in the pair, "Asleep On A Train" and "Awake On A Train" illustrate the rhythmic travel through lush countryside in some of the most un-danceably melodic electronica ever created.
Perhaps what is most amazing is that these playful youths were still in their teens when Yesterday Was Dramatic—Today Is OK was released. Such mastery of all things recorded does not come this often. Leave it to a grouping of innovative youngsters to abandon the expected guitar establishment and create a work as mature as it is youthful. In fact, this album couldn’t have been created by any less. It is their refusal to fall into a niche that makes them brave enough to combine accordion, harmonica, and horns with carefully textured program.
If Sigur Rós are out to reinvent guitar music, Múm are happy weaving together a collage of prerecorded samples with traditional acoustics to recreate a yesterday not nearly as dramatic as it may have been. Never have I heard such a groundbreakingly nostalgic album that invites the listener to sit around the warm fireplace. Björk may throw cutlery from her cliff while Sigur Rós drift at dawn on their glacier, but Múm will continue to embody the warmth of the looped carpet and vanilla aroma of lazy snowed-in days. After all, Iceland really isn’t that far away. My inner child would have it no other way.
