History of Silence is a revelation from start to finish, because múm are back, and their adventurousness yields such compelling results. It’s their best album to date.
The return of múm in 2025 is a welcome surprise, and their new album, History of Silence wastes no time further upending expectations. “Miss You Dance” reintroduces the group after more than a decade of absence from newly recorded music and initially appears to be a dark synth song, far from the skittering electropop that listeners might recall from classic albums like Yesterday Was Dramatic – Today Is OK.
“Miss You Dance” is both weightier and more dynamic than much of the group’s last album, Smilewound, and hints at their versatility. The ominous plodding that begins the song anchors the track in a monotonous rhythm. However, the piano and strings serve as a melodic counterpart that directly references a tune from the title track of Finally We Are No One.
These two modes in conversation might have constituted the one good trick of a typical múm song. Here, though, they are merely the prelude to a lovely vocal duet (with some harmonization) and near silences as a compositional element. True to the album’s title, silence is a recurring motif on the album—a welcome creative decision for a band who have in the past produced so many memorably busy, even noisy, pop songs.
The piano-and-bass-led “Kill the Light” likewise threatens to disappear, gossamer and spare in its first half and bracing in its back half after the drums kick in. “Kill the Light” resembles the left turn Elbow took on Flying Dream 1, and the results are similarly redefining for múm.
In the chorus of the single “Mild at Heart”, Sigurlaug Gísladóttir sings, “There is another way,” as if she is disclosing a secret or a hidden world. Like a song destined to be performed at Twin Peaks‘ Roadhouse, “Mild at Heart” possibly plays with the title of David Lynch’s own Wild at Heart (or Barry Gifford’s novel). Fittingly, History of Silence impresses as a strange and beguiling sonic world unto itself. “Avignon”, the lyrics of which evoke place and physical sensation, combines a creaky piano with comparatively lush, Moon Shaped Pool-like strings and a duet placed at the forefront of the mix.
“Only Songbirds Have a Sweet Tooth” distorts and warps the human voice, implicitly challenging it as a source of sound (think of the titular birds, whose vocalizations are mimicked in another track, “A Dry Heart Needs No Winding”). Percussive as the song is, thanks to the piano, there is a gradual diminishment or sublimation of “beats” as the song progresses. In this sense, “Only Songbirds Have a Sweet Tooth” joins what might have been múm’s supposed post-rock sensibilities with wherever IDM might be heading in its fourth decade.
The final song, “I Like to Shake,” brings the preceding creative elements together, notably strings, silences, and an incongruous mix. Beginning like a lo-fi Mark Linkous recording, “I Like to Shake” blooms into a high-quality classical style and then combines both approaches for the closing seconds. History of Silence is a revelation from start to finish, because múm are back, their adventurousness yields such compelling results, and, lastly, because it is so unlikely for a band to release its best album almost 30 years after forming. Silence is golden.