Múm
Go Go Smear the Poison Ivy
Fat Cat

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The Sugarcubes and Björk quickly proved how well Icelanders could get their freak on. It took the glacial drift of Sigur Rós to reveal a more beautiful side to that tiny nation's disproportionately fruitful music scene. It's in this latter realm that you'll find the ethereal glitch pop of Múm, though things have changed for the band. Gone are both twin sister singers Gyoa and Kristin Anna Valtysdottir, reducing the band's creative core to Gunnar Örn Tynes and Örvar Póreyjarson Smárason, who have dropped much of the beauty-for-beauty's sake ambience in favor of organic toy box clutter. But the electro-acoustic likes of "School Song Misfortune" and "A Little Bit, Sometimes" are just a little too relentlessly whimsical for their own good, childlike ditties too chaotic for background and too aimless for foreground, leaving Múm stranded in a sort of musical purgatory. The group's at no loss for good ideas, just for songs on which to hang them.

-- Joshua Klein