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MÚM: Go Go Smear The Poison Ivy [Fat Cat]

The fourth album by these Icelandic chamber-laptoppers is so tangible, you can practically cuddle with it. Go Go Smear The Poison Ivy isn’t merely twee, it’s like pre-twee. (Or is that pwee-twee?) It’s full of twinkles, seesawing dynamics, calls and responses between live and programmed (and toy?) instruments and choruses sung in a ragtag unison of coos and snarls. It’s also múm’s most song-based work, and the fact that so many of the lyrics involve the word “la” make it all the more singable. múm is now down to just two main members (Gunnar Örn Tynes and Örvar Póreyjarson Smárason), but you’d never know it from all the sounds that pile on top of each other like mattresses in a fairy tale. Sometimes their pea is undetectable, as on “They Made Frogs Smoke ’Til They Exploded,” whose animal-rights theme is obscured by its horns, fuzzed-out bass, sweet-and-high keyboards and 2001-saluting clicks and cuts. While Poison Ivy’s impressive design becomes shtick after a while (it builds up, it breaks down, it builds up … ), it’s nonetheless adorable. múm’s unclassifiable cross-breeds have all the joy and hope of people instilled with the knowledge that they can be whatever they want when they grow up. [www.fat-cat.co.uk]

—Rich Juzwiak