TUNNG - Comments Of The Inner Chorus

TUNNG - Comments Of The Inner Chorus (Thrill Jockey US) Comentários: Without wanting to exhaust your tolerance for figurative comparisons this early on in a review, Tunngs second full length ('Comments On The Inner Chorus') opens with the kind of mealy instrumentation and fizzing electronics that suggest leaden skies and fog-shrouded ramparts - a situation merely heightened with the distant cry of "break in the Sun, till the Sun breaks down". If it wasn't such a hoary cliché, this is where we'd pull out our Wickerman reference... Very much at the crossroads where the more traditional aspects of British folk and the new-guard of -tronica suffixed troubadours collide, Tunng have seen their idiosyncratic breed of honeyed-acoustica attract attention from the Broadsheet/BBC4 cabal, as well as appealing to scene fanaticists and those who've stumbled in via Jose Gonzales and his bouncy-balls. Now signed to Full Time Hobby, Tunng really do coax the very best of their well-worn palate - luxuriating in a sound that references the likes of Nick Drake, Jose Gonzales, The Notwist, and any number of talented folk-founded types, yet never descends into the more twee regions that can often blight this genre. Unreasonably accessible throughout, 'Comments...' follows on from the opening electro-folk of 'Hanged' with previous single 'Woodcat'; wherein the Tunng duo of Sam Genders and Mike Lindsay unreel a fleeing-glimpse of a song that builds incrementally throughout with heartfelt melodies (which wouldn't look out of place on a Simon & Garfunkel record) and a sense of joyful loss ("I miss having coffee watching TV") that is poignant, rather than mawkish. Closing with a stuttering patch of silicon-sliced production that keeps it firmly in the 21st Century, 'Woodcat' acts as a a camera obscura for the rest of the LP - with 'The Wind Up Bird' undercoating it's fragile shell with a brace of violins and mandarins, 'Stories' coming across like 'Pause'-era Four Tet, whilst 'Jenny Again' (borrowing a melody from The Sundays) is likely what Elliot Smith would have sounded like were he from Blighty. Elsewhere, 'Sweet William' matches waterlogged timber with filigree electronics, 'It's Because We've Got Hair' is a beautiful slice of boy/girl folk-pop, whilst the throbbing bass, cold-water synths and chittering beats of album closer 'Engine Room' could happily grace a Daedelus release. in boomkat [Para Ouvir/Samples]