Hey Fellas! have you heard? Word on the Street is that Folk Music is going to be the Next Big Thing. So don your corduroy flares, grow your beards (this applies to both sexes), and start drinking pints of ‘Scrubbers Muff Real Ale’ from your local, using your very own cast-iron tankards.
As a lifelong fan of folk music - one of the most stylistically
unselfconscious and musically purist of genres - I’m genuinely bemused by the wave of scenesters harping on about how folk is the new black. Darling.
Have they ever heard of Kathrine Tickell? Do they know what a Hurdy Gurdy is? Do they not understand that your average folk festival is currently the only place in the known universe where it is considered acceptable to wear “those” T-Shirts with Native Americans printed on the front? Except perhaps for Utah.
Do they not grasp the importance of spending your childhood holidays being dragged around ancient battle-sites around Northumberland? Or do they have relatives who, even to this day, are active members of Sealed Knot? Nah, I bet their knowledge of folk (or "folktronica" as the haircut brigade have now deemed it) doesn’t stretch beyond Steeleye Span’s “All Around My Hat” and the theme tune to the Titanic.
So here’s something for you - contrary to popular belief, folk isn’t all about tales of murder, incest, and deflowered milk maidens. Well, actually, it is. But, there is at least something in the chin-stroked opinions of those ‘in the know’ – there is definitely an emergence of quality acts who are looking and sounding inconspicuously folksy, and none more so than the wonderful, wonderful TUNNG.
I first stumbled across this band about a year ago, when I bought their first album “This Is…” purely on the basis of the cover artwork – totally discarding the old maxim “Never Judge a Book [or CD] by it’s Cover”. It looked weird and I was intrigued. It was a nice surprise when the music was insanely good as well. Bonus.
Essentially, their tunes are rooted in acoustic folk, with hefty amounts of Redbourne-influenced finger picking, bizarre vocal effects and samples, and interesting beats to add the salt and pepper. All this sound flows over a subtly pervasive crackling noise, sounding almost like old vinyl (or more likely an open camp fire), which adds to the eerie weirdness. Thankfully, Tunng have successfully managed to recreate this sound during live performances, as well as on the album. Probably be being inventive in the percussion department (playing shells with toes, rolling a ball around in a bucket, etc…).
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Their set was performed in the foyer of the Barbican on a Saturday afternoon, to a somewhat chaotic crowd of bearded folkies, families with countless small children (some, predictably, in papooses), and of course their fans. It was a good vibe, man.
The set mainly comprised tunes from their first album – they opened with the rolling number “People Folk”, a tidal piece with the offset rhythms of the vocals, percussion, and guitar creating a dizzying sense of disorientation.
The terminally spooky “Tale from Black”, is a tune reminiscent of traditional murderous folk songs, but with dark lyrics that translate directly into 2006 – “She knows the thrill of the chase in her veins/And she knows that the sinking’s a trick of the light/Praise for the silence, and cool gentle rain/And she prays that the radios run through the night.”
The stories in the songs are delightful and eccentric to say the least. To quote Mike Lindsay (vocals, guitar, songwriter, all-out genius), one of their new tracks is “…a song about a man, and his girlfriend did something wrong in the village. So for her punishment she gets turned into a hare. And he wants to find out what she did wrong, so he can be turned into a hare too…” and it’s a stunningly beautiful piece of music. But we never did find out what it was she got up to.
They ended with the space-addled “Surprise Me 44”, a gentle, uplifting melody, that breaks into demented ragga during the middle 8. Fantastic. They also played a superb cover of Bloc Party’s “The Pioneers” turning it on its head into something almost completely unrecognisable – initial pagan-heavy beats that get groovy, ending with a splash of salsa that morphs into fuzzy reggae. It should be heard in order to be fully appreciated.
Tunng are quirky, dark, intelligent, and their modern take on folk music is like staring at a landscape painting, that changes and reveals hidden layers the more you pay attention to it.
Be warned though, invite Tunng into your lives and you may experience a strong urge to start wearing hemp-woven trousers and go camping more often.
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