Iceland makes it easy for Mum

Click on the links below to listen to tracks from Mum's album Finally We Are No One

Finally We Are No One: regular quality high quality
Green Grass Of Tunnel: regular quality high quality

Say what you like about Icelandic pop stars but you certainly couldn’t accuse them of being self-conscious, as anyone who’s ever heard Bjork in full flow will surely concur.

Take Múm for example, the latest hopefuls to emerge from that strange, cold land somewhere north of here. Consisting of two guys and two classically trained twin sisters, their current single ‘Green Grass of Tunnel’ taken from their forthcoming album, Finally We Are No One, is the kind of unashamedly eclectic and experimental pop fare that we’ve come to expect of musicians from Iceland.

With an instrumental line-up that includes accordion, melodica, glockenspiel, synthesisers, guitars, bass and cello, along with a heap of electronically programmed, bleeps, beats and washes, it defies comparison without almost anything else currently doing the rounds.

Conducting this short interview while simultaneously trying to park her car in a Reykjavik side-street, Kirsten from the group explains their equally unconventional origins. “First it was just the two guys,” she begins, speaking in barely comprehensible tones. “They started to make electronic music, just the two of them together. Then my school was putting on a play and they wanted us to take part. We kind of glued together after that. We were doing operettas with poets and opera singers first and then we started doing more experimental music. Sometimes we go abroad and then two of us moved to Berlin a few months ago.”

Their debut album Yesterday Was Dramatic, Today Is OK, garnered glowing press praise on its release in 2000, while a re-mix project, Please Smile My Noise Bleed, released in Germany late last year further consolidated their reputation. Currently signed to FatCat, Múm have played a handful of dates in the UK including a gig in Cambridge Football club! Were they involved in the local live scene before they began touring abroad?

“There is no real scene in Iceland for a group like ours,” she explains. “A lot of people start making music just for the fun of it which is what we did. I didn’t think a lot about a music scene though I grew up listening to bands like the Smiths and Guns ‘n’ Roses. Then I started to play my own stuff but I don’t’ think it has influenced my own music.

“There is such a thing as Icelandic pop music and there are bands who tour the country in the summer and make money out of it. We’ve often played in small places in the North of the country, the only problem is you can get stuck up there if the weather gets bad.”

The band’s moniker, Kirsten explains has no meaning whatsoever apart from the fact that “it’s a nice word,” while the title of the single, ‘Green Grass of Tunnel’ is similarly obtuse. “It’s just a nice image of a tunnel,” she says. “The song takes place in this valley with a swimming pool and they are sending music to everyone in the world through the tunnel.”

That explains that then!