For Icelandophiles who semi-learned the words to Sigur Rós and Sin Fang records back in the day, the wait for Múm’s return has been long enough. History of Silence, Múm’s first album in 12 years, nestles into the fibers of their longtime sound: whispered lyrics, gauzy strings, melodica, and percussive ambiance. Although their seventh studio album and follow-up to 2013’s Smilewound’s gets its name from dead air, Múm are lively and present throughout, be it the shimmering sounds of “Kill the Light” or the vividness of “Mild at Heart.” Recorded, deconstructed, reassembled, and refined over two years, History of Silence is a humble comeback that savors every second.
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Kitba: Hold the Edges [Ruination]
Kitba makes bedroom-pop music that harks back to a time before “bedroom-pop” was really a thing. On Hold the Edges, the Brooklyn-based harpist and singer-songwriter, otherwise known as Rebecca El-Saleh, composes hall-of-mirrors synth ballads with the sumptuous textures and sing-songy quality of Frou Frou, their vocals, often Auto-Tuned, a nervy mix of the shellshocked and declarative. The mazy single “Soften,” one of many breakup songs on the LP, is about “being angry long after you feel you should be, wondering when your hardened heart will soften,” they said in press materials. “It’s twisting inside and chaos, vibratingly bright and tense.”
