múm — Go Go Smear Poison Ivy

After the lacklustre to plain awful Summer Made good, I thought all was lost for múm, but with Go Go Smear Poison Ivy- they’ve recaptured the wonder, inventiveness and tuneful flair of their music, and also made their most mature, polished, compact, musically dense album of their career- all with out losing any of their fun & charm.

Everything here just feels so much more focused & tight, they’ve cut away all the drifting,wishy-washy moments which in the past had been charming but by Summer Made Good seemed to over taken the need for decent and memorable constructed songs.The music here is so more powerful, epic and complex, though their fay childhood sonic dabbings are still surviving they’ve built them into a more sophisticated  and grown up musically frame work, with dramatic and big sounding cinematic air. With lush/ swirling vocal layers that have all but lost their past small child quality. With a pefect blance though-out between the clever electronic elements and more organic textures/sounds

The album like their other career high Finally we are no one, seems to flow as one long story/ musically tale from the up-beat guitar indie chug/feedback meets cute swooning string work, piano  and beats mix of Blessed Brambles, through to last track Winter (What we never were after all) with it’s sad wavering and dripping piano melody opening that gets lifted and sucked in an almost Russian sounding dramatic mix of vocals and muffled organ pump and out of focus strings work. You really feel like you’ve been told an riveting story or lived a captivating film- that has managed to be touching,quirky & cute, dramatic, both light & dark, & heart-string pulling sad.

This shows that the band have well & truly pulled out of their musically cul-de-sac & returned to been a band that you await with baited breath to hear what they'll do next. A seriously musically scrumptious album that you'll want to devour with gusto again and again.An career high & one of this year must own albums.