TUNNG - Good Arrows

The fervid creativity of the Tunng has produced their third album in the space of just thirty months: a remarkable release rate, no doubt unrelated to any commercial agenda, but rather simple proof of an urgent creative drive and the parallel evolution in the sound of a band that, despite the widespread acclaim it has received, isn't content to endlessly reproduce its own playful, deeply personal and unpredictable take on the folktronica paradigm.

Indeed, it should be stressed straight away that on "Good Arrows" electronics make up just one of the many extravagant divertissements the English band layers onto its usual bed of enchanted, thoroughly timeless folk, and as such is almost always used to add movement and slightly "dirty up" the excellent melodies. And it's precisely on the melodic side that Tunng place the emphasis across the eleven tracks on this record, where folk arabesques and faint electronic beats, spare acoustic arpeggios and sudden electric outbursts, dark field recordings and lively sixties atmospheres all coexist in a balanced way, with no apparent seams.

Indeed, it's sunny melodies with a pleasantly retro flavour, yet thoroughly contemporary at the same time, that mark the incipit of "Good Arrows", first in the crooked folk of "Take" and then in the intriguing summer song "Bricks", both only lightly dotted with electronic beats and static, which barely affect their light, enchanted atmospheres. Over the course of the album, however, Tunng seem to enjoy presenting continuous variations on acoustic, electric and electronic themes, pairing the groovy vocal basslines with more graceful instrumental passages ("Spoon", "Secrets"), or creating melodic loops born from interweaving voices ("King") and from the repetition of a bare acoustic chord ("Arms"), which with astonishing ease bring a whole array of eccentric, mismatched elements back into harmonic unity.

And it's this disarming ability that represents the band's true "extra gear", one that, while not entirely giving up its sonic quirks (not just electronic ones: there's even a pneumatic drill and an ambulance siren!), now allows them to craft plenty of captivating songs and even a potential summer hit like "Bullets", which, amid piano notes, little organs, crystalline melodies and an up tempo pace with a decidedly catchy chorus, could get even the staunchest opponents of music's physical dimension moving.

This pronounced pop streak shouldn't be read, however, as a kind of "normalization" of the band's sound, and nor should the choral, essential and almost entirely acoustic folk spirit of "Hands" and "String" (the latter, with Becky Jacobs' voice front and centre, could almost be mistaken for a track by early Espers), since here Tunng show how the disorienting effect of their music, on previous records, wasn't due solely to a heavier dose of electronic inserts, but still lies in the enduring freshness of a vaguely freak approach, genuine and, for that very reason, never redundant.

And the fact that this unchanged expressive spontaneity is joined, on "Good Arrows", by greater attention to melody and a quest for simple, effective songwriting is certainly no detriment to the originality of the end result - quite the opposite, in fact, as it confirms Tunng as the most capable and relevant interpreters of that singular hybrid of tradition and modernity, of folk, pop, electronics and assorted eccentricities.

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29/08/2007