Múm were the right band at the right time when their Icelandic debut Yesterday Was Dramatic - Today Is OK found its way to the States in early 2001. Both Boards of Canada and the Aphex Twin were on extended holiday, but the melodic machine music they'd brought to the 1990s was everywhere; while IDM had already begun to spill over into indie pop, the particulars of the merger were still taking shape. Meanwhile, Sigur Rós had recently sent notice that there was more to Icelandic music than Björk, so people were looking for the island's next band. No surprise, then, that a pop-leaning collective from Reykjavík that married cut-up beats to warm synths and trad instruments like accordion and trumpet sounded appealing. And it didn't hurt that two of their members were attractive women-- twins-- who had already appeared on the cover of Belle & Sebastian's Fold Your Hands Child, You Walk Like a Peasant.
None of which is to minimize the impact of their first record, which I still sounds great. It's the highlight of their catalog because it's mostly instrumental; the soft, high-pitched coo of the Kristín Valtýsdóttir would soon become the group's defining feature, to the band's detriment. Her vocal style certainly has its fans-- see the many guest spots and collaborations she's been involved with since-- but I find her treacly girl-child persona tolerable only in small doses. Which is what this brief Peel Session EP delivers: recorded in 2002, three of the four tracks are drawn from the debut.
Radio sessions from bands reliant on sequencers can be a dodgy proposition. Autechre managed a couple of interesting EPs by building and re-building tracks from scratch; Boards of Canada, on the other hand, typically re-created their studio records down to the letter. There are noticeable tweaks to the originals, but it's questionable how much they add to the work. The opening track does an interesting job melding a hopped-up version of the debut's "Slow Bicycle" (re-titled "Broken Bicycle") and combining it with "Smell Memory". The latter suffers little for the absence of its usual build-up, jumping immediately to the memorable synth line that clatters like a copper music box with 120 volts running through it. The primary backing track on the cuddly video game-inspired "Awake on a Train" appears to be just a playback of the original, but the guitar work is obviously live and put in the foreground to positive effect. The doomy "Now There Is that Fear Again" is enhanced by a thicker accordion sound, and the live hand percussion blends well with a sequenced glitch that serves as a metronome. Closing "The Ballad of the Broken String" uses almost no electronics and is the thick accordion drone is satisfying.
Still, nice as it sounds, and essential as it may be for fans, it's unclear exactly what the point of Peel Sessions is. The songs are shorter, the live sound can be a bit thicker, and we get an idea of how Múm worked live. It's a decent sampler of Múm drawn from their most interesting time, but ultimately there's little reason to reach for this over their debut. These songs benefit from the more drawn-out approach of the studio record; when I hear Yesterday's "I'm 9 Today", I'm ready for another hour from this band.
