We Chatted With Örvar Of Múm About Their Compilation Album, 'Early Birds'

Múm has never been a band that one can really pin down. No one record is quite like the other, and they like it that way. The Icelandic band has been together for 15 years, so it makes sense that they would have enough unreleased tracks to make an album jam-packed with experimental pop songs (although that's the only consistency you'll find). Múm never seems to slow down, as they've recently finished recording a film score for the indie drama Jack & Diane, and are currently touring and working on songs for the next album. We caught up with leading man, Örvar Þóreyjarson Smárason, and discovered the comfort in chaos.

Whose idea was it to put together Early Birds?
The thing is that when we started making music, we made so many songs that we put out in different ways. First, we did a split, then we did a small CD with a comic book, we worked on a couple of plays. We did so many different things, everything was just all over. I think for probably three, four, five years, we’ve been wanting to make a collection out of it because we thought the songs really deserved to be collected and put together somehow. Also, for us, we just really wanted to hear all the songs. We kind of always neglected it and never had time to do it. We just pushed it to the side when we were doing something else. It can be really hard to focus on old stuff, because there’s always something new and more exciting. But finally we made it and put it together.

You mentioned composing music for plays. Can you tell me more about this?
When we had been a band for a few months, we got asked to do music for our first play. We’ve also done a lot of radio theater, which is probably one of the more interesting things we do because it’s such an amazing world. Sadly, though, I think it’s almost a dying thing now. When we’ve done radio pieces, we’ve worked really closely with the directors to make the whole sound atmosphere—not just the music itself—and try to make the story and the dialogue mix with the music in a way that’s probably not possible in other mediums.

I know Ingibjörg Birgisdóttir did the album artwork for Early Birds. Has she put together your other album artwork?
She’s done a few things. We actually met her when we were doing the first play that we did probably 14 years ago. So she’s worked on a lot of things with us. But not all of the album artwork. She did the artwork for Go Go Smear the Poison Ivy and she’s done videos for us. She’s done a lot of the Sigur Rós stuff as well. We’ve had different people do our album artwork, but it’s always a big part of what we do.

Do you usually collaborate with the artists or do you let them do whatever they want?
There’s always a bit of a collaboration. Some colors, some texture, that we have an idea for for the album. The artwork is usually done physically, not in a computer. That’s just something that’s really fitted with what we do.

Yeah, that makes sense with the use of a typewriter for the cover of Early Birds.
You have to use a real typewriter, you can’t get a good typewriter font these days.

How did you get involved with the film Jack & Diane? How has it been putting together the music for the film?
We’ve known the director for a long time. It was good to finally work with him properly.

How’d you meet him?
He lived in Iceland 12 years ago or something, so we got to know him then. We stayed in touch and we’ve always done some music for some of his films. He hasn’t used a lot of music, but this is the first time he wanted to have us score. It was also the first time we did what you might call a proper score for a feature film.

How was that process?
Really difficult. Very intense. We did so much music and only 5% of it actually ends up in the film in the end. For us to work in music, we’ve always been our own masters. It’s obviously hard to work under a director or producer, but still, it’s something we’d really like to do more of in the future. I think it’d be good for us to do horror films with a lot of music. More open and crazier. Jack & Diane is a very American indie film with all the stigma and rules that follow. It’s a really interesting film. And it was really interesting to work with Kylie Minogue as well.

Yeah! What’s it been like working with her?
It’s funny, it was pretty much a coincidence. There was a misunderstanding with the director. He asked if we could possibly make a song with her to have in a scene where people are at the disco—it would be a normal Kylie Minogue disco song. But I misunderstood him, so we ended up making this almost ballad thing for the end credits. In the end, we were so happy with the song that we really wanted to keep it. We went to London to record it with her. Sadly, I was on tour with another band, so I wasn’t there for the recording. But it came out really nicely, I’m really happy with it.

You said something about horror films earlier. Are you guys pretty into that?
Yeah! We enjoy watching a lot of film. I think horror film is so interesting for music. Sometimes, I have a problem with music in films because everyone’s always holding back. 95 percent of films that happen now either have a generic score or just collective pop songs. It’s so seldom now that you hear a bold film score. I think maybe this is still possible in horror film. It would maybe allow you to be open, because it’s horror.

I think the tooth loss idea in the new video for “Hvernig Á Að Særa Vini Sína” was done really well.
Oh yeah, “How to Hurt Your Friends” in English. The video is made by a friend of ours. I told him the only thing I wanted was to have someone losing their teeth. He had to push back the video shoot a few times because he had to get real teeth. I think he may have bought them off a dentist in the end. He wanted to use real teeth. Maybe I’m not allowed to say that…maybe the dentist is going to lose his job for selling black market teeth.

How does that theme tie into the song?
It’s a part of the song. I think there are a few múm songs that have something about losing your teeth or breaking your teeth. I don’t know why, but I have some sort of phobia. It’s something I used to dream about. I connected it somehow with the emotional life. I don’t know why I connect it so much, but it ends up in a lot of the lyrics, so finally I wanted to have it in the video as well. Because it looks bloody.

I saw that you performed at a castle in Italy. What was that like?
Yeah! That was just last weekend. Really amazing—this beautiful castle by Lake Garda. It was up on a really high hill in the middle of all these mountains overlooking the lake and the villages around. Such a beautiful night. It was an old castle and ruins and archeological sites. We’re so lucky we get asked to play places like this. We enjoy it so much than your normal club gig. Not that we don’t enjoy those, but this is a much bigger experience. Regularly these things will happen to us. We played in the castle garden. The castle tower was just towering over us. We love playing these different locations so hopefully we can do more things like that. I think we’re playing next year sometime on an island in the Red Sea. That should be really crazy.

How are the songs coming along for the next album? I heard it might be released in the spring.
We’re hoping to finish the album in December or January. The thing is we never know until the album itself is finished. It’s really hard to put a timeline on these things. We’re still working on the songs and we usually keep writing and working on the songs up until the final minute when we need to deliver the album. It’s not a normal process where you write the songs, practice the songs, and play the songs live and then go record it. We have a much more chaotic process. It’s really nice.

Can you expand on the chaos of the process?
It’s just the way that the songs are. Sometimes, they’re not really songs, they’re just melodies and atmospheres and chord progressions and weird sounds all together in a ball of yarn. Which makes it different from a normal song because we can start anywhere and a sound will take us on a whole change in the song. Or a new instrument because a lot of the songs are inspired by picking up a new instrument. New instruments will take the songs in a different direction and completely change them. We do that to keep us interested and engaged in what we’re doing. We need to pick up different things and try different things, otherwise it goes into a routine. Then we just start doing something else. We couldn’t do it otherwise. If we weren’t experimenting and trying out new things, we would be doing something else because we don’t have the attention span to do something we’re not interested in.

Every múm album sounds different. Do you feel that it’s important for musicians to always be experimenting with different sounds and styles? Or do you like bands that are mostly consistent?
I think most the bands that we hang around in all of our circles feel the same way and do things in the same way.

Can you tell me what direction this new album is heading in?
The only thing I can say is that it’s definitely going to be very different from the last albums. It’s not going to sound like any one of them. At the moment, we’re doing a lot of electronics and string instruments. I don’t know if that’s a clue to anything. I really don’t know how it’s going to sound in the end at the moment. There are also a lot of fun songs on it!

Keep your eyes peeled for info on the new album and check out these live gigs:
September 6th – Punkt Festival in Kristiansand Norway. Curated by Brian Eno.
December 1st & 2nd – St.Petersburg & Moscow.

@teedunc