Mugison: Niceland
Accidental

Recorded entirely at a church in his hometown Ísafjörður, Niceland is Mugison's soundtrack follow-up to his Lonely Mountain debut. Needless to say, hearing the songs with its visual counterpart (Friðrik Þór's film presents the story of a learning disabled woman who loses her purpose in life and her learning disabled boyfriend who tries out to find it for her) would induce a markedly different experience from hearing the songs alone. Still, the soundtrack holds up credibly by itself and ultimately must be assessed on its own terms, whatever its relationship to the film. The music is gentler and more restrained than Lonely Mountain, slower and more melancholy overall. As one might expect for a soundtrack, many of the twenty-two tracks are instrumental with some fleeting fragments. There's an eccentric side to Mugison, here borne out by the unusual mix of traditional and computer-generated sounds and wide-ranging compositional styles. Appearing throughout are folk ballads, electric blues, soundscapes, and accordion waltzes that sound transported from another era.

The album's best moments predominantly emerge in the vocal tracks, like the lovely opening ballad “2 Birds.” Mugison creates a melancholy, back-porch ambiance by pairing his affecting vocal with the sweet cooing of a female singer, though the song is slightly marred by unnecessary background coughing and poured water noises. In “I'd Ask,” a waltz-melody is rendered memorable by his soft singing alongside an acoustic guitar and accordion. (The song re-appears as two instrumentals and a second vocal take, this one a harder-edged, multi-voiced version featuring drums, accordion, and electric guitars.) He reprises the heartfelt “Poke A Pal” from Lonely Mountain, this time coupling raw intertwining guitars with his quiet vocal. Measured pacing and an uncluttered arrangement make the funereal “Scrap Yard” the most effective instrumental.

Other instrumental pieces impress less though remain credible enough. “To The Bank” is a notable slice of laid-back folk-blues while the atmospheric “Gráturnar” recalls the music of Lech Jankowski with its similarly Eastern European, primitive feel. Fellow Icelander Kippi Kaninus contributes an instrumental too, a brooding fusion of electronic glimmers, scurrying electronic beats, and percussive clatter.

Niceland is weakened, however, by its completeness. Of the twenty-two pieces, at least seven are fragmentary, inferior, or unnecessary and might have been better excised; whatever cohesiveness this diverse collection might have achieved suffers by their inclusion. “Mugigospel,” an instrumental fragment of shrieks and vocal growls, annoys more than anything else, and were it removed “Patrick Swayze,” a soundscape of thunder, string bowings, and garbled voices, would not be greatly missed; similarly, as its title suggests, “Gráturnar + Voice” superfluously repeats “Gráturnar” with a voiceover. Ultimately, deleting such excess would still leave forty-one minutes, and a more satisfying and cohesive forty-one minutes at that. Here and elsewhere, less is invariably more.

November 2004