Music Review

02 December 2008 02:23 BST

Mugison: Mugiboogie

Mugiboogie, July 14th.

In a nutshell...

Yet another Icelandic oddity

What's it all about?

Mugiboogie is topped and tailed by some pretty bog-standard blues-rock, but finds time to sandwich in some halfway decent alt-folk and one baffling Rob Zombie-style grunt-fest.

Who's it by

The third album from Mugison is the first since he traded his laptop for a drummer and bass player. This is a shift in direction which is likely to have caused very little uproar as few outside his home country will have heard of him. Does anyone know the Icelandic for Judas?

As an example...

"I love the way she is looking at me/Like I was fruit hanging from a tree/the way she moves her hips/The way she wets her lips/I love the way that girl is looking at me." - Mugiboogie

Likelihood of a trip to the Grammys

Not unless he wears a swan, starts speaking in a squeaky voice and answering to the name of Bjork. Doubtless there are worse albums around, but this one is unlikely to bring him the same level of recognition enjoyed by his female compatriot.

What the others say

"It's an intense, almost schizoid, experience, impressive in its own way, but not one I’d like to repeat too soon." - Independent

"If you dumped blues, power pop, psych rock and heavy metal into a transmogrifying machine, the machine would rumble mysteriously, then spit out a brightly coloured block of a hitherto unimagined polymer known as Mugison." - Paste Magazine

So is it any good?

Blues Explosion records are clearly not hard to come by in Iceland as their influence is very much in evidence on the songs that top and tail this little curiosity. While wearing your roots on your sleeve is not necessarily a bad thing it rarely makes for a classic album especially, when an artist's efforts simply remind you how much better someone else is.

That's not to say that Mugiboogie is bad, simply average. The introduction to the eponymous first track is reminiscent of his fellow Icelanders, the criminally overlooked electroclash outfit Apparat Organ Quartet, but soon falls into the blues-rock that Mugison seems to feel most comfortable with.

Strangely it is the quieter tracks where the album really comes to life. Songs like George Harrison, Deep Breathing and My Love I Love are gentle, largely acoustic numbers which should appeal to fans of Bonnie "Prince" Billy or Devendra Banhart, at least musically. Lyrically, the album is nothing special and if it's deep and meaningful you're after then you'll want to look elsewhere. I'm Alright also deserves a special mention if only because it sounds like it should be on a White Zombie tribute album and has only slipped on here due to a CD pressing error.

Finally, extra kudos for the fold-out case the album came in, if only because I'm sure I should be able to fashion it into some kind of makeshift hat.

5/10

Will Stevens