Go Go Smear the Poison Ivy is an electro-pop smorgasbord recorded by the dreamy Icelandic septet Múm in a fishing village near their homeland’s Western fjords and on an archipelago a ferry ride from Finland’s coast. The album’s first single, “They Made Frogs Smoke ‘Til They Exploded,” bubbles from a chorus of childish cooing and hopscotches into twinkling “glitch” percussion, layering slices of sound chopped by computers into fragments that chirp and click like a cricket drum roll. Another standout, “Dancing Behind My Eyelids,” meanders as if mimicking a gently gurgling brook, lulling listeners to sleep before rounding a bend, trapping them in a current seemingly composed of high-pitched static and radio tower signals behind windswept vocals, then pitching them over a waterfall as the track blissfully reaches crescendo.
