Finally We Are No-One

Iceland, eh? A small island nation, sparsely populated with a bunch of pale eccentrics that get fucked up as often as they possibly can and produce more brilliant music than their numbers should by rights allow? I’m almost sure I’ve heard of somewhere quite like this before…

Whatever, Múm are a perfectly strange product of their unique environment and with a penchant for

playing gigs in swimming pools to a floating audience, it was always unlikely that Finally We Are No-One would appeal to your average Stereophonics fan. What we do get, however, is a luscious 56-minute lullaby for troubled heads, sung quietly and played with delicate precision.

First single ‘Green Grass Of Tunnel’ sets up the album’s template beautifully: washes of warm synth and strings play tag with barely-thawed xylophone and the sort of broken English ickle-girl vocals that one might easily fall in love with (were one, say, a hotpress art director and given to such flights of fancy). Indeed, the vocal tracks are where the album stands strongest, particularly on the pastoral wow and flutter of the

brilliantly-titled ‘We Have A Map Of The Piano’.

The latter, mostly instrumental, half of Finally We Are No One has a tendency to meander – in an everso charming way, of course. Here and there you’ll find some familiar ideas lifted straight from the gentler end of the Warp roster, but the deftness of Mum’s tender twisting of them makes for engrossing or somnolent

listening, depending on your own mood.

Just don’t operate heavy machinery after listening to this, unless it’s something really cool like a snowblower.