An open question for whoever had to put together the press kit for the Icelandic quartet Múm's third album, Summer Make Good: What could you possibly have said nice about the vocals here? How many times did you want to just say to this band, "I'm sorry, I can't do this," hang up your press kit-writing jeff cap, and just spend the rest of your life banging your face against a sheet of nails?
Let me explain. For starters, Summer Make Good departs further from the group's 2000 debut, Yesterday Was Dramatic, Today Is OK and settles almost entirely on instrument- and song-based compositions. Change is good, and I can dig a group experimenting with its sound and redefining its goals and so on, but let me be perfectly clear about Múm's song-aspiring arch: It's a fucking terrible idea, and they should stop it immediately.
In his review of 2002's Finally We Are No One, Mark Richardson remarked quite accurately that "Múm is not bestowed with the gift of melody"-- as it turns out, they aren't terribly great instrumentalists, either. The songs on Summer Make Good are similarly flimsy, low on ideas, and, as lo-fi compositions, terribly unambitious. The clear loser of this outing, however, is singer Kristín Anna Valt\xFDsdótti, whose grating, Fran Drescher-as-a-seven-year-old vocals rival the unspeakably awful, kitschy croons of fellow Scandinavian Anton Maiden.
It's not that Múm have broken a barrier to make their first entirely unpleasant record-- the addition of drums and trumpet do make for some compelling instrumental moments-- but there simply aren't enough exciting or even vaguely interesting moments in each song, and between this scarcity and, Jesus, that voice, Summer Make Good seems an unfortunate addition to 2004's disappointments.
It's frustrating how little there is to say about these songs. "Weeping Rock, Rock", "The Ghosts You Draw On My Back", "Sing Me Out the Window", "Oh, How the Boat Drifts", and "Will the Summer Make Good for All of Our Sins" are of an obnoxiously homogenous "dark" and "brooding" sentiment; the songs ride roughly the same tempos and formulas, where stripped-down acoustic ambience leads unalarmingly into a tepid chorus, then usually trails off into more electronic terrain, as if in a nod to the band's Yesterday Was Dramatic past.
If Múm plans to stick with this sound, then "The Island of Children's Children" and "Nightly Cares" seem probably the best direction in which they could continue-- the two songs definite highlights of Summer Make Good. Formally, the songs benefit from much more careful consideration than was given to the album's other tracks, both covering considerable melodic ground while also bearing witness to the band's former strengths as electronic artists. I do respect what Múm have attempted here-- it's great to see a band challenge itself. It's just a shame that it had to come at the expense of what made them so exciting in the first place.
