Múm Live¶
319 words on Live
Doing Köln with the flatmates was fun, but we were heading for even more fun – in fact my birthday present this year – to go for some Icelandic goodness at Gebäude 9. Getting there was a bit of a challenge as walking around with a group of ten – even with all of them being supposedly grown-up – isn’t trivial if you want everybody to stay with you. In the end we did manage, though (and I started to definitely not-envy primary school teachers on class trips…).
The bands playing were Múm with Seabear as their support and apparently some other combination of (mostly?) their members playing a few more songs earlier on.
Seabear
Seabear looked rather young on average with their singer/guitarist triggering some Conor Oberst comparisons. The music was lovely and a bit more edgy (rougher, less poppy, whatever) than it is on the album. Which I considered a good thing.
A number of my flatmates ended up liking Seabear best that night. So they must have done something right besides filling a stage with half-way odd instruments and Scandinavian girls.
Múm
Personally I still preferred Múm, who, by some lucky coincidence, I have known and liked for years. Their music is the odd bit more subtle and magic. It manages to be fragile and strong at the same time. While the sounds themselves are quite soft and full of oddball curiosities (Cello, piano-flutes?, recorders…) the result is surprisingly powerful. Like a wave.
At the beginning I had the impression that things weren’t quite perfect in terms of mixing or playing and that the ‘floating’ sense that goes with their music didn’t quite come over. But that improved throughout and the magic came over in the end. In total I was surprised how much of the music was hand-made. I hade expected a bit more of of electric gadgets to be involved in making it.
