Mum - Old Vic, London, 25/4/2004

  by Emma Haigh

published: 18 / 4 / 2004

intro

Icelanders Mum are often seen to be enigmatic. At a show in the intimate surroundings of the London Old Vic, Emma Haigh watches them dispel with some myths and also create a few more

As the lights of the Old Vic dim, the stage becomes a warm thick blue. Gradually, like children mindful of being watched by some unseen authority, silence falls under the quiet strains of Coltrane. We wait watching the stage for flickers of movement, and when they don’t appear, a nervous laughter titters across the auditorium. Duped by the shadows, the talking erupts again excitedly. People turn to their neighbours, enrapt with anxious anticipation they, pondering the loss of Gyoa Valtysdottir, ignore the darkened platform, and so a small figure floats into place unnoticed.  Ghostlike, phantoms take shape and drift into position behind pale instruments. A chord strikes lonely, it hovers faintly over our heads growing and spilling into the echoes of a muted trumpet, a howling chime, the fumbling trickle of water. And then a whisper. Around me, bodies lean forward involuntarily, pressing themselves into the tapestry, seeking entrance. But for a few silhouetted shadows, the music appears as though blinking out of a dream. There is a peculiar sense of disorientation, of having to trust those producing these paranormal sounds quite blindly. And yet, as with waking at an unknown hour, familiarity quickly trickles in and all unease is nigh forgotten. Woven like a Grimm fairytale, Mum’s live performance is highly visual and intimately textural. There is a sensual dissolution of traditional audio narrative that delights in a simultaneously morbid and lissom subversion of aural expectation. Moving from instrument to instrument they tiptoe about the stage as though trying not to distract. The voice gasps loon-like around the delicate flight of her small symphony, and a child’s dark secret fantasy unfolds conspiratorially beneath the harping mouth organ and plinking xylophone. Her cusping vocal tendrils expand almost painfully introverted while unabashedly exposed. Perhaps because of this, to hear Kristin Valtysdottir speak between songs, however softly, seems unnatural. As with their recent album, 'Summer Make Good', the first half of their performance verges on the sinister. Strains of haunted echoes and hums seep in an unbroken reverie, accompanied by pulsing blips and cracks bleating gently from reverberating snares. A disintegrating harmony, a mournful gush from an accordion, a turning stroke splintering from a violin. They delve into the unknown, beckoning unidentifiable shadows forth to commune ethereally just beyond the grasp of our mortal understanding and allow the fantastic to abscond the real. And just as the weight of this spell begins to churn uncomfortably on our innocent minds, the metronymic introduction of 'We Have a Map of the Piano' descends. For the first time, a gasp flutters across the audience, an audible smile. Suddenly the seven bodies spring to life, as if they have been waiting for this one moment. Quite contrarily to everything past, and to the amused bewilderment of their audience, Mum is rocking out. They prance and tremble, voices rising up, chase each other about the stage and wind each other up. Still, as swiftly as it begins, the chirping wail of a harmonica merges once again into the low call of midnight dreams. When at last their last encore (a beautiful rendition of 'Green Grass of Tunne'l sung in Icelandic) slips across to hang gently over our heads, and the room swells with applause, and our imaginations are handed back unscathed and full as one by one they stoop to give thanks, a satisfied harmony falls. The reality of their island upbringing is quite clear now, relieved and overcome with aching fondness, it sweeps over us like discovering the Midwich Cuckoo’s are children with a small c after all.

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