The Tunng story that Harp never ran
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You've probably heard that Harp is kaput, which is a drag from any number of perspectives, but one of them is that the stuff that they haven't published will never be published. I'm going to put it here. You'll have to squint a little to imagine the photos and glossy paper and neat typefaces, but you're all imaginative, creative people. I'm sure you can do it.RIP Harp. It was fun.The tip of your TunngRaucous live shows prove that somewhere along the line, the British electro-folk outfit Tunng transformed itself into a full-fledged, roof-raising band. The band's third album Good Arrows, out now on Thrill Jockey, reflects the live band's evolution. Where earlier albums were collaborations between original members Sam Genders and Mike Lindsay, the new one is a full-band effort. "We created it together, all six of us," said Genders in a recent phone interview. "It’s the most band record of the three."Genders and Lindsay met several years ago, when Genders was looking for a producer for his singer-songwriter material and Lindsay was seeking a singer. The two bonded over a shared love of British folk and began recording together. Working next door to London's Expanding Records, the pair absorbed electronica almost by osmosis -- and incorporated them in their debut Mother's Daughter and Other Songs. That combination of folk harmonies and odd electronic textures has defined Tunng since the beginning. Yet with Good Arrows the band seems to have integrated these two sides into a seamless mesh. "On the first album, you can really hear the line between what Mike’s doing in production terms and what I’m doing singing and playing the guitar," said Genders. "On the second one it’s less obvious. But on Good Arrows, I feel like we’ve got a sound that people would recognize as being Tunng." It's a sound that kicks off the buoyant pop of "Bullets" off with an unearthly sample of a Japanese song from the 1950s, and that sprinkles unexpected spoken word in amidst shimmery guitar chords and harmonies. "Phil [Winter] is really into looking at weird old speech records in shops and having a listen and seeing if there’s anything interesting on there," said Genders. "He’s always coming up with something."
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