Metaphrog / Hey / Múm
Dreams Never Die
By Ed Chamberlin
 
There's an ad on at the moment where a baked bean, who is, I'm sure, voiced by the fat guy from Seinfeld, evaluated his exceptional prowess as a bean in an apologetic and self-deprecating way. Timeless TV indeed, but the baked bean does remind me of ol' Louis here, a baked bean dressed in dungarees with a mechanical robin/housefly hybrid for a best friend. I wanna buy some drugs off the guys who came up with that. Anyway, who better to soundtrack such psychedelic children's entertainment than Múm? Well, Hey apparently, who provides the original version of Dreams Never Die (sounds a bit like a James Bond film, actually) a tune so unbearably twee, I recommend any diabetics against listening to it. Electronic precussion stumbles like Bambi's first steps and pre-school piano trundles along, as crunchy metallic beats bash away powerfully. This sugary sound would have worked much better had the melody been stronger, but as it is, it doesn't quite evoke the right kind of sweetness. Múm, who seemed to be losing their way ever so slightly within the cold, dark waters of their last album Summer Make Good provide a worryingly lacklustre remix. They have consistently been able to use excellent percussion sequences to convey the exact same childlike wonder – in fact, it has been this quality that has defined their greatest work. But they avoid it here, and the result is a slightly more confident track than Hey's, but it's not ear-catching enough. Despite this, the whole thing makes a lot more sense if you go to their website and watch the lovely animation by Louis' creators Metaphrog.
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