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A few cursory listens and Google searches later and we’re still left with worryingly little to say that is either illuminating or relevant about Sussex’s five-piece Mumm-Ra (save for the fact that they’re named after the scariest quasi-fascistic villain in 9:25am Saturday morning history). On the surface at least they are yet another anonymous lighters-aloft troupe giving ‘indie’ (whatever that word means these days) a bad name.
But fleeting opinions and first impressions be damned; though with hindsight the music here is almost always sugar-high and instantaneous in its impact, for this reviewer at least (and we suspect we’ll be in a minority here), the charms of ‘These Things Move In Threes’ took a while to unravel. Sure it’s not exactly a Captain Beefhart opus in terms of being un-impenetrable, but get beyond the winsome socially-inept tweeness of it all and what you find is Jarvis-like self-assertion of the highest order (“I’m a terrible dancer / But hey let them look, let them laugh / I’m not listening” on opening track ‘Now Or Never’ firmly chisels Mumm-Ra into their niche); songs with as much fire in their hearts as longing in their eyes.
A line of some note can be traced to here, back from the ultra-melodic geek-pop of Weezer through to The Killers’ way with a synth-enhanced life-sized chorus, taking in everything from ‘Great Escape’-era Blur (especially the brass on ‘Song B’) to, more recently, We Are Scientists along the way. Definitely not welcome is any detachment or irony: when James New sings “Got nothing else to do / Then hope I dream of you”, it’s because he, er, really really wants to dream about a girl. This is heart-on-sleeve of the highest order.
Of all the tracks on ‘These Things…’ only one, ‘This Is Easy’, is a complete dud, its deadpan Casio-tone and dull momentum extracting the colour from Mumm-Ra’s otherwise charming insecurities. Otherwise this debut album is one potential single after another (bona-fide advert-soundtracking proper singles ‘She’s Got You High’ and standout ‘What Would Steve Do?’ excepted). The handclaps of the title-track sound like they’ve wondered in from a slick remastered copy of ‘Is This It’, ‘Sick Deal’ is downbeat keyboard pop where the music appears to find an excuse out of nowhere for an ostentatious orchestral ending (‘Hot Fuss’ never did that!), while squint (or whatever the aural equivalent is) during the closing moments of ‘Light Up This Room’ and you’ll think someone’s sneaked on the new Bright Eyes album by mistake.
Ultimately Mumm-Ra’s supposedly un-interesting façade manifests itself not in their lack of rock and roll ‘personality’ (something only weekly music magazine readers seem to care about), but in the way the music doesn’t do anything beyond being pretty, pretty good. That's interesting as it gets, and sometimes that’s enough; this thing called ‘indie’ looks like it’s going to go far.
