You don't need to be Freud to regard teeth as a delicate issue. They can make joy look joyous and pain look painful, and on the cover of the new múm album they do both at the same time. As with "Yesterday Was Dramatic – Today Is Okay" (2001), "Finally We Are No One" (2002) and "Sing Along To Songs You Don't Know" (2009), "Smilewound", which is due out on 2nd September on Morr Music, is another example of the band's art of juxtaposing two conflicting meanings and taking advantage of the energy created through the tension between both.
Sparser in sound than many of its predecessors, "Smilewound" is an airy, relaxed record. The múm-core-duo of Örvar and Gunni doesn't make you laugh out loud (except maybe for the quirky vintage Arcade-sound-start of "When Girls Collide"), but it will make you smile often - despite the heavenly voices singing about violence in one form or another in most songs. Musically, múm's capability to build playful electronic sound-ornaments around simple melodies is in full bloom.
