The magic of smoking frogs

The seven-strong band, who sidelined their laptops in favour of a rainbow of instruments on stage, release a new single this week and their fourth album on 24 September. For a group who give their mesmerising, mystifying songs titles such as They Made Frogs Smoke 'Til They Exploded, this was a suitably eccentric place in which to announce their return.

The venue didn't seem particularly well prepared for a few hundred visitors at once, however, as long queues to get in, for the toilets and for the bar and its single bottle opener revealed. Plus the reappropriated church was so dark, I didn't learn anything about gardening.

Múm offered their song Blessed Brambles as a concession to the green theme, and overall created a more organic sound than they have on record by employing oboe, cello, trumpet, zither and lots of melodica.

Current vocalists Ólöf Arnalds and Sigurlaug Gísladóttir lacked the distinctive babyish tones of departed original singer Kristín Valtýsdóttir, which wasn't necessarily a bad thing. They made ghostly tracks such as Oh, How the Boat Drifts their own.

Other new ones such as Dancing Behind My Eyelids and A Little Bit, Sometimes were more upbeat than past work, groovy rather than ghostly. An underrehearsed cover of ancient gospel singer Washington Phillips's jaunty Mother's Last Word to her Son also demonstrated an easy-to-miss sense of humour.

Though they occasionally sounded as if they were all playing different songs at once, at times they generated a magic that transcended even this most memorable space.

Múm
Museum of Garden History, SE1