Thrill Jockey
2007
Good Arrows
About This Album
For their third full-length, Good Arrows, British six-piece Tunng continue to deliver the same combination of folk, pop, and indie electronica that earned the band the description of "folktronica." Lightly programmed beats and blips pepper the acoustic guitar arpeggios that give the songs their base, as Sam Genders' soft vocals layer over themselves and those of the backup singers and the myriad other instruments that twist and squirm their way into the compositions. Kalimba, hammer dulcimer, clarinet, eclectic samples, and electric guitar all manage to find their way in, but they're arranged in such a way -- gently, sparsely, deliberately -- that nothing ever seems cluttered or ornate. This is helped in part due to the attention paid to structure here, because even with the noises and distractions and long stretches of space, there's a cleanliness to the songs, verses and choruses and even the occasional hook all playing an important part in the album's overall effectiveness. The fantastic "Bullets" almost seems like it could be by the (later) Beatles, with the line "We're catching bullets in our teeth/It's hard to do but they're so sweet" pushing itself into the foreground as the one-two piano rhythm beats out playfully behind.
Track List (try tracks 1,2,3,4,5,6,7 and 10)

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