The long awaited debut from Thundercats-inspired seaside 6-piece MUMM-RA sees gentle harmonies collide with an epic pitch to make retro indie a la the 1990s. Though the band are in turns proud of and frustrated by their hometown, Bexhill-on-sea remains one of the album’s main themes and the main source of inspiration for ‘These Things Move In Threes’ despite this ambivalence.
Talk about sand in your shoes – Thanks to Youth’s production you can hear the ice cream man’s jingle clearly in ‘Out Of the Question’, one of the four singles taken from the record. It’s quickly followed by two more, the sublime and very catchy ‘She’s Got You High’, and the thumping, haunted ‘Song b’. The simplest of chords make for pretty, accessible listening, and the jamming ethic gives it a powerful kick despite the lightweight structure of the songs.
Elsewhere, the chiming melancholy of their slower numbers throws up such oddities as the dramaturgical analogy ‘Light Up This Room’ with its wonderfully understated epic feedback and booming bass, and the snare-tripping headswimmer ‘This Is Easy’. Touted as eccentric by the band’s PR, it’s for once a startlingly accurate description of a record that is often breathtaking and never less than engaging.
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The jukebox fury of ‘What Would Steve Do?’ carousels and cavorts in a dizzying fairground of harmonica and gain heavy guitar, the stomping break dissolved in harmony-rich vocal craziness, before the abandoned piano sadness of ‘Down, Down, Down’ brings the curtain down on a very impressive debut.
One to hear, if you haven’t already. Superb.
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