by LORRAINE CARPENTER

Within the softly brooding swirl of new machines, vintage keys and assorted strings on Summer Make Good, the third album by Iceland's Múm, Kristín Anna Valtysdóttir's girlish coo moulds murky soundscapes into sinister lullabies. Though sparse by pop standards, her vocals are more plentiful than on any of the band's previous albums, like hushed narration over musical Grimms' fairy tales.

Summer Make Good was demoed and recorded in two Icelandic lighthouses, including the Hog, where the band banged out their previous album Finally We Are No One. The record documents some of the isolated location's creaking, whistling and dripping sounds, but it was what the lighthouses lacked that proved most influential.

"There are no telephone lines, only one longwave radio station for the sailors," says Valtysdóttir. "There's not a lot to think about except what you make up in your mind."

Despite the sometimes surreal beauty of the sea, the mountains and the northern lights, the choppy conditions around the Hog created situations where band members and Fatcat label folk had to be rescued by drunken fishermen.

"Sometimes we got silly and got lost on a mountain or stuck in a storm," she says, "but when you're on a small boat on the Icelandic sea, there can be problems."

Valtysdóttir's twin sister Gyda traded her sea legs for school a couple of years ago, leaving Múm to study the cello at an Icelandic university.

"Sometimes I miss working with her," says Kristín, adding that the core trio - herself, Gunnar Örn Tynes and Örvar Póreyjarson Smarason - has collaborated with an array of musicians since Gyda's departure. "Mostly, I miss her because she's my sister, but I'm glad she's happy with her decision."

Kristín is skeptical of twin telepathy - although she says, "We're really good at Pictionary when we get together" - but, after years of touring and shuttling between her Berlin apartment and her mother's house in Reykjavik, a part of her yearns for Gyda's more sedentary lifestyle.

"I'm starting to dream about staying in one place for a while," she says. "Some of the houses in the countryside are pretty sweet."

With Kim Hiorthoy at Cabaret on Thursday, June 24, 9pm, $15.50

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