Neatly spiced hazy golden Belgian-styled witbier maintains mild candi-sugared orange-peeled coriander theme above muted banana-chipped clove sweetness and tart lemon zest souring. Refreshing menthol-eucalyptus herbage and grassy heather hops promote subsidiary ginger ale sensation of efficient light-bodied rep.
Attaching basic organic instrumentation to machine-made computer samples and detached rhythms may sound technologically befuddling, but London-based band, Tunng, have taken their earthy folk rooted inclinations on a space-age journey beyond the sea. Bending quirky stream-of-consciousness lyrics and a goodly amount of stately low key charm into freshly coined ‘folktronica,’ they’ve acquired a deeper emotionalism over time.
Getting together during 2003, founding singer-songwriters Mike Lindsay and Sam Genders began experimenting with electronic folk elements from the start. Though Genders left the band prior to triumphant 2010 breakout, And Then We Saw Land, the unique stylistic blend the twosome configured for developmental ’05 debut, Mother’s Daughter And Other Songs, continued to succinctly evolve as Tunng gained momentum.
‘07s Comments Of The Inner Chorus layered poignant neo-Classical string arrangements atop rural folk abstractions and foggy Elliott Smith-affected notions such as the wonderful typewriter-clicked ballad, “Jenny Again.” Lindsay’s sonorously hushed baritone hangs in the air above the dirge-y incantations. Much like Matmos’ musique concrete glitch-pop masterstroke, A Chance To Cut Is A Chance To Cure, Tunng also successfully incorporated a brittle admixture of arcane rhythmic sound affects that snap, crackle, and pop inside your eardrum.
Better still, ‘08s sterling Good Arrows brought crisper acoustical ambience and more pristine percussive clatter to the forefront. “Arms” and “Hands” sling tinselly confectionery and wiry electronic samples across crystalline 6-string enticement. Alluring piano-based ‘oom-pah’ lamentation, “Bullets,” elegant tape-looped chime, “Bricks,” and mystical proggish stomp, “Take,” attain a transcending elliptical stillness only the finest folk provocateurs – going back to Dylan – could efficiently and effectively deliver.
Reaching extreme majestic heights, And Then We Saw Land conveys a surging nautical theme to an excellent assemblage of wholly traditional folk amblers. As if that wasn’t enough, Tunng herein merge fascinating indigenous African rhythms into the incipient baroque-bound computer bleats, bleeps, and bloops that consume their anxious elegies. Bongos, shakers, traps, and kalimba deluge an accessibly versatile array of well-defined tunes. Tribal Burundi beats underscore tingly horn-driven drum-clustered hex, “It Breaks,” and climactic epiphany “Don’t Look Down Or Back.” As an explosive sidestep, Tunng scamper through hard-rocking thrasher, “Sashimi,” with the riled intensity of The Who – a magical ceremonial highlight and their most thrashing guitar shredder since Good Arrows’ Megadeth-inspired prog-rocker, “Soup.”
But the big news is Becky Jacobs, who has stepped up her involvement to fill in the gap left by Gender’s departure. Her breezily uplifting harmonies add authentic Gaelic flavoring to Gregorian-chanted hummer, “These Winds,” and posh echo-drenched seduction to spindly acoustic piano twinkle, “The Roadside.” She shares nimble dulcet lead vocals with Lindsay on gentle banjo-laden homecoming, “Hustle.” Furthermore, current band mates Martin Smith, Phil Winter, and Ashley Bates affix synths, samples, Spanish guitar, melodica, and harp to the latest cavalcade of sounds. Newest member, drummer Simon Glenister, beefs up the backend.
Put aside any doubts, Tunng’s truly raised the bar with their fourth long-play excursion.
The album title, And Then We Saw Land, seems to indicate musical discovery and its inherent fulfillment.
MIKE LINDSAY: It’s a compilation of a few things. There’s quite an adventurous feel to the record – its romantic journeys and nautical themes now and again – to make it feel like an excursion. It was a challenging record and the title’s a bit of a metaphor for feeling good about our situation.
-John Fortunato
More sour than sweet in 4-month old bottled version, fizz-popped hazy golden moderate body brings tart lemon peel bittering to floral, herbal, and grassy hops. At midst, teasing candi-sugared sweetness folds into vinous yellow grape esters, unripe orange rinds, and yellow peach skins. White-breaded backdrop softens citric illusions, allowing dry straw-hay-barnyard parch to gain influence. Touch of vodka or gin liquoring in deep recess.
A fortuitous meeting at an Ivy League radio station partnered schoolmates Ben Knox Miller and Jeff Prystowsky in a worthy musical venture that has provided some great dividends along the way. Uniting in 2002 as Brown University on-air staffers at WBRU, the dynamic multi-instrumental duo became interested in learning everything they possibly could about compositional construction, studio production, proper miking, and other technical aspects from the outset.
Four years down the road, the humble Rhode Island twosome would hit the road as The Low Anthem, finding a national audience with their sympathetic travelogues, rustic road odes, and hexed lover’s concertos. In 2007, Jocie Adams came aboard full time and the skillful troika received great underground exposure with the convincing What The Crow Brings.
By this point, The Low Anthem had secured their status as one of the best Americana-related acts, comparing favorably against en vogue folkies such as North Carolina’s Avett Brothers and New York’s Felice Brothers. A more direct contemporary comparison with Seattle’s baroque rock-oriented Fleet Foxes is fair, but the dramatic pathos wafting through the drifting rural pastures this alluring Rhode Island troupe sojourn cuts deeper and goes further on ‘09s magnificent Oh My God, Charlie Darwin.
An ambitious achievement reliant on plaintive Country folk restraint and countered perfectly by feverish roadhouse Blues, Oh My God takes place in the 19th century when English naturalist Charles Darwin’s scientific theories on the transmutation of species were being developed. And despite Miller’s pragmatic lyrical perspective, his solemn requiems cannot escape dipping into spirited religiosity.
“The interest in Darwin is less with his historical figure and more with the way he challenged the idea of survival of the fittest. Especially when you look at morality and the teachings of Christianity,” Miller asserts during a phone call from a secluded Oklahoma village on route to Texas. “It’s a record about how our ideas and values are subjected to survival of the fittest. I’m not anti-religious, but the album recognizes the church has a missionary arm and the church is spreading itself and its ideas like an animal reproduces and the genes are passed on. There’s the reference that Darwin’s acknowledged that sort of analogy – looking for something to hold on to as far as values or identity.”
Miller’s parents were highly influential music informants. As a pre-teen, basic roots rock and acoustic folk artists topped the list of formative compositional inspirations.
“The stuff I heard as a kid were Bob Dylan, Woody Guthrie, and Pete Seeger. That’s what I heard at home,” he advises. “Certainly, I found the Beatles and Rolling Stones, but Pete Seeger was always on whether at school or wherever. I learned his songs at a young age.”
Projecting gloom, agony, and longing with his strikingly melancholic fragile tenor and nasally droned baritone whine, Miller’s trembled quiver stirringly haunts stripped-down meditational ruminations such as the whispered opening dirge, “Charlie Darwin,” and desolate Cathedral-bound Cowboy Junkies-like threnody, “Cage The Songbird.”
“Those are arrangements we came up with at the end of the process,” Miller informs. “We tried them different ways, changing the tempo, instrumentation, and who’s playing what instrument. That happened right at the end of the studio session. We said, ‘OK. Let’s do them an octave higher.’ There’s this choral quality where we all sing the harmonies together. It’s just a small fraction of what we do, but it’s an important part of our sound. I’m not sure whose idea it was but it came at the end of a long process of figuring out how to (make the songs gel).”
An air of desperation also bedevils poignant muzzle-voiced maunder “Ticket Taker.” Similarly, the barren atmospherics of comforting campfire command, “(Don’t) Tremble,” and mystical yearn, “To Ohio,” recall Nick Drake’s ghostly empyreal ‘70s recordings. Forlorn train-whistle harmonica, pump organ, banjo, clarinet, and saxophone help increase the magnitude of Miller’s solitary grief-stricken hymnals.
“Charles Darwin has a better live feel. What The Crow Brings was self-produced and engineered. Jeff and I did it as a duo and everything was overdubbed. We were learning to do basic production. It was a modest production,” Miller admits. “Because it was just the two of us, we spent a lot of time adjusting microphones and recording each other. Besides the first two tracks we laid down, there wasn’t much of a live feeling to the record. There weren’t as many hands on deck so we couldn’t experiment with these wild arrangements. You had to go one step at a time to see how the combination of things sounded. But when there were three of us (with the addition of Adams), you could try different things.”
Interestingly, the Low Anthem’s ethereal moniker could be seen as a teasingly sly referral to Minneapolis slo-core enchanters, Low, and the hushed anthemic lamentations thereof.
My hypothesis has Miller laughing before he jokingly quips, “That only occurred as an afterthought.”
Then again, he’s not so dismissive of my intimations that “Ticket Taker” alludes to Simon & Garfunkle’s majestic “Bridge Over Troubled Waters” (via lyrical tidbit ‘I will be your arc to float across the storm’) or equally resplendent neo-Classical elegy “The Boxer” (as per the agonized ‘boxer felt no pain’).
“Those are all references I’m very familiar with. But there’s a lot of other songs about boxers like Dylan’s “Hurricane.” So it’s not a direct reference,” he surmises.
Thankfully, The Low Anthem never feel relegated to only delivering drowsy Country & Western-procured entreaties a la the reverent “Will The Circle Be Unbroken” knockoff, “OMGCD.” They prove just as successful reinterpreting Mississippi Delta Blues, tearing it up with the best of ‘em on whiskey-bent junkyard rumble, “Champion Angel,” an electric guitar-driven number that’d fit alongside the Black Keys, North Mississippi All Stars, and early Kings Of Leon.
“That song shows a seriously different side to the band. Why should we be restricted when we’re able to use so many vintage instruments,” Miller maintains.
Moreover, scraggly gravel-voiced omen, “The Horizon Is A Beltway,” and Beat-derived Kerouac poem, “Home I’ll Never Be,” indulge Tom Waits’ raspy beatnik scruff. Another mournful pledge, “To The Ghosts Who Write History Books,” begs for consolation while indirectly exorcising demons.
Perhaps Charlie Darwin unintentionally mirrors America’s current economic woes with its downtrodden hard-times-in-the-land-of-plenty proverbs. One good listen will convince the unsure, and probably uninsured, proletariat that we’re all mere castaways betwixt the Atlantic and Pacific shorelines. It’s sometimes comparable to the bleak caliginous sundowners underscoring two of ‘09s finest long-play indie releases – Grizzly Bear’s divine revelation Veckatimest and Animal Collective’s equally enlightened Merriweather Post Pavilion.
The main difference is The Low Anthem’s reliance on established roots-based folk (dust bowl balladeering and old timey Appalachian anecdotes included) instead of conventional pop techniques. They inventively redirect present-day narratives and pave the way for a looming apocalyptic future with a few choice acoustical renditions. Their grim, bleary-eyed accounts plead for salvation in a world full of fear and pain and disintegration.
-John Fortunato
Snappy dry ginger ale theme addles pale-bodied golden-hazed moderation. Mild mandarin orange peel bittering, persistent kaffir lime tartness, and tangy lemon zest counteract fizzy ginger sweetness. Oncoming eucalyptus freshness seeps into overwhelming citric souring and cloying white-sugared soda-like rue. Loses some carbolic champagne-like sparkle after initial thrust.
Fabulous whiskey-barreled Imperial Stout picks up wood-charred bourbon-rum whir to enhance lovely gourmet coffee bean bittering of tapped ‘Speyside’ version. Cedar-burnt espresso, black chocolate, cherry puree, dried fig, and anise illusions fill out oats-flaked caramel-smoked malting.
On tap, raspy wood-smoked pine-needled resin-hopped bittering pungently reinforces front-loaded juicy-fruited glisten. Lusty floral bouquet enhances tart grapefruit peel veneer as well as apple-ripened pineapple, mango, banana, passion fruit, and kiwi tropicalia. Gin-soaked juniper berry harshness and sharp alcohol bite never exceed creamy malt richness, giving this a deeper resonation than most in its highly exalted IPA class.
Lacking the brawny brashness, but not the steely metallic pungency, of its ‘burly’ descriptive, this coarsely phenol brown ale gets mired in sour nuttiness. Grain-burnt peanut-shelled walnut char coats resinous hop astringency, overwhelming chalky mocha malting. Bitter rough-edged nutty finish falters.
Pleasant Vienna-styled caramel-malted grain-roasted sweetness heightens red apple, cherry, peach, and melon fruiting that fades too quickly into phenol recess. Wood-dried floral-spiced hops and teasing grapefruit rind tartness subtly embitter fruited front end. Mildewed fig-prune souring and puckering white grape tartness fill the back end. But better maibock lagers have sweeter malt residue, brighter nectar juiciness, and bitterer hop counteraction for truer springtime ambience.
In the bottle, moderate-bodied French-styled biere de garde lacks originality, complexity, and character. In need of deeper rye malt penetration and rounder sour-fruited enhancement, this wavering golden-hazed farmhouse ale cannot properly follow-up likable bruised orange souring. Lemon pith, green apple, and apricot illusions lose luster as juniper berry bitterness gains prominence. Precarious dry-spiced tingle barely registers. On tap, light white-peppered hops prickle salty lemon-limed orange-grapefruit rind bittering and herbal nuances of veritable session beer.
On tap, French-styled copper-toned medium-bodied Bier De Garde spreads honey-roasted malts across sugar-spiced fruited plain and funky cellared yeast pungency. White-peppered grassy-hopped bittering reinforces acidic champagne-like white grape and green apple tartness illuminated by nectarine-peach-tangerine-mango tang. Sour-fruited midst receives sweet cinnamon-coriander spicing and tertiary sherry-burgundy wining that tames gin-soaked ethanol luster.
Balmy limited edition Belgian-styled witbier aged and sold as boozy Grand Cru brings tangy white-peppered yellow fruiting to frisky coriander spicing of yellow-hazed medium body. Tart orange-peeled lemon-bruised white grape proliferation enhances creamy butterscotch, vanilla, and banana liqueur whir as tertiary peach, pear, and cinnamon apple illusions receive gin-soaked candi-sugared sweetening. Though opulent peculiarities mesh well, its understated warmth and overall richness deteriorate over time.
