Review Summary: tomorrow was great, yesterday will be fine, i'm going to bed
Today will only ever be
okay. I can’t remember much of today – the morning was over in a second; breakfast positively inhaled, walking in the biting wind. The afternoon and the evening both dragged their feet; the shuffling of paper, the attention span balancing on the edge of a knife. Tonight, I had a hot chocolate. It was okay.
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Give me time removed, though, and I’ll recollect and reassess the day’s events. Was I productive? Was I stagnant? Was I content? Was I sedated? It’s by this time that
today, the present, will become something more or less than the average. It’ll be measured in comparison with other days, held up against the stained-glass window of past experiences in order to work out whether or not its happenings were justified. Múm – living with tomorrow in mind – make music that dissipates as soon as it manifests. It is post rock with the screen tearing, masking little pieces of information before they can reveal themselves. Okay at first, something entirely different in hindsight.
I’d like, if you please, to discuss the relationship between the electronic and acoustic elements of this record, because it’s exactly the type of dynamic you don’t appreciate straight away. I didn’t – the way the glockenspiel (?) coils itself around the creaky-old-rocking-chair beat in
There Is a Number of Small Things only appeared when I took a step back. Something trickled slowly into those cracks; an understanding, perhaps, of the way music breathes, or the realisation that we need to breathe ourselves. It is, microcosmically, a patient song, not so much bringing two disparate worlds together as it is letting them fall into place. I didn’t even notice it happening.
Then there’s the white-noise shuffle that drips across the swaying accordion in
The Ballad of the Broken String, gradually rising out of the old mahogany surface the notes were etched upon. The record, evoked by its
moments and not its songs, creeps in under the covers only when you don’t think to expect it. The organic and the synthetic expand together gradually -- a time lapse of the sun rising over a sleeping city skyline.
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It’s been three days since I wrote that introductory paragraph. I realise now that I was more productive than usual that day. More social, too. I’m thankful for it – for the capacity to see clearly the steps I took to forming new relationships, and to chip away at a work ethic that’s usually halted by my front door. I’m also just now realising that
I’m 9 Today is one of the most glowing, charming, arcadian openers in the history of forever. Forever’s a long time, but at least it leaves enough space for this album to grow.
