Tunng - 'Good Arrows' (Full Time Hobby) Released 20/08/07

Sam Genders and Mike Lindsay saddled the first two Tunng albums with the pagan folk of 'Mother's Daughter and Other Songs', and the Jackanory fable-esque tales of 'Comments Of The Inner Chorus' seeing more of a band performance by coming across like a digi-age Pentangle with Bert Jansch inspired guitar stylings, and the lazy folktronica tag they'd lumbered sticking out like a jumper's size label. 'Good Arrows' sees Tunng teeing-off with a playfulness that'd charm the boots off the Duke of Wellington and his legions, Phil Winter's snippetydibbet sampledelica still intact with beats, field recordings and English voices narrating vintage radio horse-races and bosum-touching quotes, trademark vocal harmonies from the band with L.S. Lowry-esque depictions of everyday life through their wyrd filters and featuring a jamboree of new instruments including hammered dulcimer and steel-strung harp which the six-piece band wrap-up with a more pop-styled accessibility.

'Good Arrows' is an album full of inventive minute observations in the songwriting such as 'Take' with the line "...making dirty pictures with her hands in the lamplight...", the hammered dulcimer, glitch and hand-claps setting a chipper foot-tapppin' rhythm, and the scheduled single 'Bricks' transmuting the mundane everyday to daydream a better world "...where all the pretty girls collect their thoughts for you...where all the bricks are bright and free...".

Folky moments come with 'Hands' as "He stands with his head in his hands/ in the corridor of A&E...we sing while the sky collapses..." speaks of the human ability to laugh in the face of adversity, and 'Bullets' has a Beatles White Album-like vaudeville take on warfare with an oompah beat "...your words are gelignite or just another sentimental aside...", tommy gun samples adding to an infectious singalong, and all manner of instruments sampled on the fire-cracking beats and bric-a-brac delight 'Arms' with Tunng TM singalong bits - "...here I go again...". Multicultural excursions with the oriental folk and typewriter samples of 'King' prove skewy and intriguing - "4 foot nothing/ knees stained with earth...your head is restless with greed...".