Pitchfork

The good news for Iceland's Múm is that they sound noticeably different on Go Go Smear the Poison Ivy, their first album following the departure of founding member and vocalist Kristín Anna Valtýsdóttir. Earlier this year, we heard her one-of-a-kind voice moving backwards in collaboration with her husband, Avey Tare of Animal Collective, on the tape-direction experiment Pullhair Rubeye. Now her former band returns, with several members of the now seven-strong band pitching in vocals, including male leads for the first time. The bad news is that, despite some encouraging changes, the band seems to be struggling to find a fresh point of view to go with their new line-up.

Múm still have a way with texture. The 95-second confection "Rhuubarbidoo" nicely blends horns and melodica with synthesized music box sounds. Strings and harp give "Marmalade Fires" a regal cast. "Winter (What We Never Were After All)" is close to Enya-style ethereality, with a small chorus of vocals singing wordlessly over a steady throb of distortion and light-streaked drone. To those who have followed the band's career from the beginning, Go Go continues to explore their distinctive sound world and finds (somewhat) interesting ways to integrate traditional instruments with electronics.

The best example of this comes with "Dancing Behind My Eyelids", released as a single earlier this year, which opens with a subtle synth pattern that combines percolating, underwater-sounding bass tones with a slight twinkle of bells. It's an instantly effective set-up reminiscent of their first album Yesterday Was Dramatic - Today Was OK, on which they managed to evoke a tangible sense of place on almost every track. When percussion and accordion fall in and the tempo increases, we find ourselves inside what is probably the best "pop tune" (though only of a sort) the band has written. The song has an appealingly dramatic sweep and delivers on the electronic folk ambitions they've hinted at from the beginning-- and best of all, the vocals even exist in service of the track.

"They Made Frogs Smoke 'Til They Exploded" is another effective hybrid, with its intentionally awkward, tumbling drum programming, blasts of harmonica, wordless kiddie vocals, and bright, 8-bit synths. Elsewhere, we hear bits of the currently fashionable Eastern European influence, perhaps carried over from the Storsveit Nix Noltes project, an Icelandic collective paying tribute to the music of Bulgaria that includes members of Múm.

Unfortunately, the advance songs we heard from Go Go are probably the two best tracks here. But while this is certainly not a great record, it probably has broader appeal. The last two Múm full-lengths seemed bent on a return to the womb through cloying titles ("The Island of Children's Children", "Don't Be Afraid, You Have Just Got Your Eyes Closed") and Valtýsdóttir's baby-like coo. The band didn't just reference the concerns of early childhood, they longed to inhabit them, to make the music sound like it came from that pre-pubescent place. While the lyrical concerns haven't really changed here, they come at them with an appealing sense of distance, allowing an easier "in," for whatever that's worth.