Tunng has brought folk comparisons upon itself by realizing melodies with intricate acoustic instrumentation, rustic male/ female vocal harmonies and the odd lyric about turning into a rabbit. But the English sextet is really about as folky as Califone. Like its American labelmates, Tunng’s methods are determinedly contemporary; the crunchy beats owe more to Aphex Twin or Boards Of Canada than Fairport Convention, and guitars, dulcimers and harps are woven into a thatchwork of electronic blips, digital crackles and looped samples lifted from old TV shows. But Tuung has taken one analog-age lesson very much to heart by making Good Arrows nice and short; its 11 songs clock in at 43 minutes, and only one is an outright dud. The Old-World-style elements—opening a cappella incantation “Secrets,” the cantering fingerstyle guitar figures on “Spoons,” the vintage horseracing announcement that escapes from “Soup” in a puff of static and music boxes—stretch and deepen the music’s time frame, but the lyrical concerns are fundamentally timeless. After all, when have catchy tunes about furtive desire and ill-conceived folly ever been out of fashion? [www.thrilljockey.com]
—Bill Meyer
