Múm
Summer Make Good
Fat Cat

In a traveler's guide to Iceland, the place Múm calls home, visitors are told to prepare for unpredictable weather by packing warm pants, short pants, waterproof pants, thermal underpants, sweaters, extra socks, coats, gloves, hats and plenty of T-shirts. For Múm's third full-length, Summer Make Good, though, pajamas are the only necessary attire.

Iceland sits precariously atop the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, a vast undersea mountain range whose subsurface volcanoes account for much of the country's tumultuous terrain. A new island was formed by eruptions from such volcanoes as recent as 1967, and the country's main surface is covered equally by glaciers and cooled lava. This geological hodgepodge seems a good breeding ground for the completely unexpected, with compatriot Björk as an obvious reference point for her voice that both lulls and startles. Her often unintelligible language is as nascent as the land itself; sounds not yet words gurgle like the very volcanoes that created her native surroundings.

Following Múm's exquisite 2002 album, Finally We Are No One, Summer Make Good mines the same unique ground. It's no departure from any of the band's previous combinations of shuffling beats, spacey blips, dramatic strings and squeaking, soughed vocals; such a delivery of old comforts is precisely what makes the album so dull.

Beginning with the first eerie wails of opener "Hú hviss — a ship," Múm embarks on a slow trek across an unvaried wasteland of mournful horns, timid violins and pretty, forgetful melodies. Singer Kristín Anna Valtysdóttir, who before sounded elfinly thus charmingly exotic, now just sounds high-pitched and creepy (if porcelain dolls could talk!). And when the band finally meanders through the dirge-like closer, "Abandoned Ship Bells," that tinny voice is the only memorable element. It's not even the last sound on the album (that's reserved for echoing bells that fade out as unimpressively as Summer fades in).

Still, there are nice moments, as on "Nightly Cares," in which sparse hums and buzzes unfold into a chiming tune that serves as well as tea-soaked madeleines for coaxing one to days long past. "Sing Me Out the Window" recalls Craig Armstrong's cinematic overtures with its tiptoeing beats and haunting "la la las," and "Island of Children's Children" sways and trills beautifully beneath Valtysdóttir's subdued mewls. Such lapses in the general drone of Summer, though, are scant.

With fellow Icelanders Björk and Sigur Rós tapping similar musical veins (organic meets electronic, singer apes dolphin pips, etc.), Múm needs to do more than up the vocal pitch in songs that inspire the same weariness that seems to possess the band itself. Summer doesn't make good. Summer doesn't even necessarily make bad. Like a dream you can't remember after waking up, Summer, for the most part, doesn't make much of an impression at all.

— Lavina Lee (lavina at flakmag dot com)