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Somewhere between Sigur Rós and Bjork lies Iceland’s Múm, a band that definitely doesn’t sound quite like anyone else. Yet, the band has calm landscape elements that feel similar in terms of emotional tone to the former and compositions complex enough to draw comparisons to the latter. This time around, Múm brought Chicago something it hadn’t quite done in past visits and that was the sense of rejoicing, a dancing festival brimming with joy.

Not that there weren’t serene moments throughout the set with the presence of quiet minimalism so strong it could almost be a physical entity. It’s just that the band’s sense of energy was so often boisterous and fresh, in part due to some of the songs off of their most recent release. Touring to support 2009’s Sing Along to Songs You Don’t Know, their set was filled with many new sorts of wonders. Highlights from their newest release included, “If I Were a Fish,” “Sing Along,” “The Last Shapes of Never,” “Sweet Like Breastmilk in the Wind,” and “Show Me.”

Indeed, there’s a new sense of laughter in the air. After the band lost previous female lead singer Kristín Anna Valtýsdóttir in 2006 when she moved on to other projects, there was a sense of a gap in their lush sound for some time. However, Hildur Ingveldardóttir Guðnadóttir’s vocals and amazing cello playing in particular have pushed the band back into that previous height. Unlike Guðnadóttir’s own compositions without vocals outside of Múm that began the night and contain a sense of desolation so thick as the sense of looming despair and chaos, her work with Múm has a different sort of charm. Singing very passionately, her facial expressions and gestures gave the audience the impression that she was both having great enjoyment from participating in the band as well as singing from the depths of her being. Overall, it is a much more whimsical affair than her solo material, which created an interesting contrast within the night’s music.

In addition to the uniqueness of the band’s arrangements and the diverse instrumentation used by the layers created from their seven touring live members, the music is complemented overall so well by a sense of choral effects from the four front-most members. Guðnadóttir’s vocals worked very well with those of fellow female singer Ólöf Arnalds, especially. The drums, bass, and guitar help create a structure for the vocal effects and other instrumentation to work its magic without the songs dissolving into chaos. The band has really mastered this in their live set between the strings, trumpet, melodica and keyboards. The new and older songs worked well perfectly during their approximately hour long set with a real treat to hear the perfect “Green Grass of Tunnel” all the way back from their 2002 release, Finally We Are No One as an encore.

Opening up, the remarkable and equally enchanting Sin Fang Bous created some beautiful melodies to prepare the way for Múm to take the stage. The band is the side project of lead singer Sindri Már Sigfússon’s equally engaging band SeaBear, who will hopefully tour North America sooner than later. There are many similarities between Múm and Sin Fang Bous especially with some of the backing members of Múm helping out on stage. Perhaps the most significant difference lies in the more pop music oriented structure. That tends to make the tracks catchier and less outwardly emotional. Their 2008 album, Clangour is filled with rich fun and it was exciting to experience these songs in a live setting for the first time throughout their approximately forty minute long set. Still, perhaps the best moment of the set was the very visable Guðnadóttir jumping and clapping wildly on the balcony above the audience.