Equation #42: Tunng

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Tunng

Tunng
Good Arrows
Full Time Hobby/Thrill Jockey

To the 18-35 set passive aggression is seen as a generally bad thing; no one likes to be told something nasty in a sweet way, no one likes little pseudo-cute notes left on their toilet seats, refrigerators or desks informing them that “…it’d be great if we could go ahead and do it this way from now on....”. However, when it comes to music, passive aggression is a different thing entirely. Take Tunng’s new album Good Arrows, it’s record filled with dreamy, sweet acoustic numbers and happy melodies, real feel good stuff, however a deeper glance reveals the dark and despairing nougat center. Being told “It’s ok, because one day we will be dead” has never come across so cheerful.

Formed in the foggy crucible of London, Tunng began in 2003 as a collaboration between singer/songwriter Sam Genders and electronic dabbler Mike Lindsay but the desire to play live gigs necessitated pulling together a larger group to translate their sound on stage. Ashley Bates, Phil Winter, Becky Jacobs, and Martin Smith joined up and brought Tunng to life and though they are officially a “band” Tunng maintains that they’re at root a collective of separate scenes; each member is involved in multiple side projects and other bands. Think London’s version of Broken Social Scene, with lyrics about death and sadness.

What’s found within Good Arrows is often acoustic, multi-tracked vocals a-la Elliott Smith with some light to medium electronica tossed in behind the scenes. Tracks like “Hands” and “Take” recall the aforementioned Indie pioneer with the subdued use of vocal doubling and present acoustic guitar and reflect the bittersweet melding of cheerful music with somber lyrics. Once the album gets going we’re presented with the computerized foundation of Tunng, songs like “King and “Arms” feature glitchy electronic backbeats that range from Postal Service subtle to TV on the Radio manic but never overpower the consistent folk feel. This is not a genre that gets much attention in the broad spectrum of current music, but there are a few bands out there that do it well, Tunng is on the mellower side, but bands like Elbow and The Notwist, and to a further extent Belle and Sebastian, bridge the expanse between the classic Nick Drake folk and the modern Hot Chip technopop.

So while we sarcastic, jaded hipster elitists will sneer at any Baby Boomer’s attempt at “constructive” criticism, at least we’ll allow our music to give us life’s bad news. Or at the very least just depress the hell out of us.

Equation #41: VHS or Beta

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VHS or Beta

VHS or Beta
Bring on the Comets
Astralwerks

Maybe I’m missing something, but isn’t the flamboyant, post-disco punkish culture of the 80’s coming back is style? Isn’t that what all the kids are doing these days? Is that not why bands like Ima Robot, The Killers, 1990’s (ironically), The Sounds, The Bravery, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, Of Montreal and countless others exist? Well apparently there’s some kind of fine balance that critics at large hold in respect to how “80’s” a band can be; if it’s only marginally “80’s” they claim it’s a flaccid attempt at the reclamation of the spirit of a Regan era counter culture, if it’s too “80’s” they say… well, they say it’s a flaccid attempt at the reclamation of the spirit of a Regan era counter culture. But certain bands, like The Killers specifically (I feel like picking on them today), try really, really hard to revive 80’s pop under the guise of the “dance-punk” craze and are ultimately rewarded for it, whether in critical praise or, seemingly the opposite, public praise. These bands seem to have hit that median vertex of “just 80’s enough” to be relevant without being hackneyed or insincere. The question I pose then is this, why can The Killers get away with siphoning disco and 80’s Top 40 and VHS or Beta get called a New Wave knock-off (in a bad way)?

I made the mistake of really digging VHS or Beta’s new album Bring on the Comets for about a week, then reading it’s reviews after I was foolish enough to form my own opinion, only to be told by a majority of critics that I was, in fact, mistaken in liking the album. I suppose I fared better than I would’ve had I read the reviews before hearing the record, as the critical assessment hovered somewhere between “Meh” and “Ugh” with brief peaks reaching the level of “Huh, ok?”; I may not have bothered and missed out on a really enjoyable listen.

Bring on the Comets begins with the muffled disco-esque instrumental “Euglama” that gently rises into sonic focus then back out to a distant bass thump. The drums plus jittery synth and guitar bring to mind too many intros to Technicolor film strips about Ore Mining or Human Digestion from my elementary school days, but it’s a fitting sensation coming from a band that gets their name from two antiquated pieces of 80’s technology. What lies after that is, if I may be honest here, not nearly as overtly “Oingo Boingo” as people might assume, what it is in actuality is fairly standard 4/4 post-new wave rock; strobing synths, chittering hi-hats and buzzsaw guitars underpinning singer Craig Pfunder’s innocuously familiar lyrical salvo. Pfunder’s voice is a hybrid of The Cure’s Robert Smith and The Bravery’s Sam Endicott (who’s voice is a hybrid of The Cure’s Robert Smith and Billy Idol) and fits the music like a sequined black glove. Tracks like “Burn It All Down”, a goose-stepping anthem glorifying, well, arson I think, and “She Says”, a near perfect Bravery/Killers clone, seem to follow the current standard for this genre of music, as do most of the others on the album, namely a heavily danceable back beat and synthesizers. But where VHS or Beta really shine is when they unashamedly ape bands like Simple Minds, Tears for Fears and Duran Duran. The title track is about the last moments of life on Earth as comets crash to the ground, but filtered through the teenage motivation of getting laid one last time before we all die in apocalyptic chaos. A great example of when a band embraces their inner Bono and write a song that seems to be created from the stage lighting up; the song begs for a blinding burst of white light as the crash of air-raid guitar and splashing cymbals clear the way for Pfunder’s echoing pleas over a quiet piano and heartbeat bass kick. By the bridge the song is soaring upwards to an expected but welcome climax where he begs “…fall into these arms tonight / and share this one last breath. / Bring on the comets!” It’s cheesy, sure, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t get one or two goosebumps. I mean, I still get chills when I listen to U2’s “Where the Streets Have No Name” and I’ve heard it a hundred times if I’ve heard once. The biggest departure from their form falls far at the end of the record on “Stars Where We Came From”, a gentle piano progression and that same steady thumping beat give way to long stretches of weightless pedal steel and builds into a crescendo that would make Sigur Ros or Built to Spill proud.

Critics tend to behave about the 80’s like they’re teenagers at Chuck E. Cheese. They’ll act really cool and aloof about it all, saying they’re just there for a slice of pizza and some video games, but in their head they’re yearning to dive into the ball pit (even though it always smells like feet) and a get a hug from a guy in a giant rat costume (even though he always smells like feet). Similarly rock critics will speak of the 80’s as though there’s this golden nugget of important music that made it into the 21st century and everything else was horrid and embarrassing, when 20 years ago those same critics were dancing to Taco and Stan Bush in their living rooms in socks and terry-cloth headbands. So my advice to them is this: next time you write off a band who calls up the 80’s in their sound, remember that cheesy, ridiculously cheesy music used to be fun and reliving it doesn’t make you irrelevant or uncool. It just makes you glad that fashion has advanced since you were an 80’s kid.

Equation #40: Liars

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Liars

There’s always some guy in the music scene who likes the bands that no one else can stand. They hover around used record shops that deal in godforsaken albums that consist of 65 minutes of a guy hitting a steel garden shed with a baseball bat. These ‘hipsters’ call it ‘avant-garde’ when it’s really just a bunch of dudes smashing things with random farm implements while doped up on goofballs. However, while this guy may be a strange and frightening animal, don’t discount his theories outright because there’s a wide world of sounds out there and, by-god, not all of them sound like a million Amish nightmares screaming in unison. My first run in with a guy like this came about 10 years ago, while I was in high school. I was still listening to crappy bands like 3 Doors Down and Matchbox 20, you know “deep, edgy” rock. This was a guy in my drama class who was already excelling in his quest to be a 17 year old burn-out; shaggy hair, pale, skinny-legged jeans and a perpetual thousand-yard stare. We got into a conversation about music one day and he insisted that all the music I liked was terrible and if I wanted to really hear some deep shit I should listen to Ween. He was so adamant about this that he let me borrow The Pod and told me I would love it and that it would change the way I looked at music.

Well, he was half right. I took the CD home, popped it in and got about 60 seconds into “Strapon That Jammy Pac” and called bullshit on his so-called musical expertise. I thought he was playing a joke on me. I mean, who listens to an hour and twenty minutes of this whacked out, lo-fi madness and can still manage to put his shoes on the right feet? Eight years later I would come to love about half of The Pod and everything else by Ween. Who knew? I think I owe that guy a beer.

The point behind that delightful and not-at-all-irrelevant anecdote is this: just because it doesn’t sound musical at first listen doesn’t mean it’s not music. And a second point: it took a while, but eventually I became one of those guys who occasionally use the term “avant-garde” in the same sentence with ”deep shit.”

Case in point: Liars. A band with a reputation for not giving a fuck about what you want to hear; they make whatever the hell kind of music they want to make, and those tuned to their wavelength know it for the avant-garde, deep shit that it is. And to hell with everyone else. Liars enjoy the kind of fame that actors like Gary Oldman and Geoffrey Rush do; they’re underrated. Just as you’ll never see Gary Oldman on the cover of Us Weekly, so will you never see Liars on TRL or shilling ringtones on Myspace. And that’s fine, because Liars are fucking above the hype, man. Their previous releases have been called “dense” and “difficult” and “what-the-hell-are-we-listening-to?” due mostly to their constant reinvention of their sound and disregard for convention.

For their eponymous fourth release Angus Andrew (vocals/guitar), Aaron Hemphill (percussion/guitar/synth) and Julian Gross (drums) spent time recording in LA and in Berlin, two vastly different musical and cultural scenes. The result is predictably unpredictable experimental rock that’s shed much of the harsh and frigid influence of Neu!-ish acid-damaged trudge and the haunted incantations of last year’s Drum’s Not Dead. However, fans of pan reverb and crazy, metallic panging noises won’t be let down; their stint in Berlin produced quite few tracks that would go over great at your next art department black turtleneck party. That said, they have brought back some of the warmer, but still fractured, ’60s feedback rock a la The Stooges or The Fall’s messier stuff that was part of their sound in a previous incarnation. The album kicks off with a rousing, dizzy stomp called “Plaster Casts of Everything” that breaks the ice by hammering you repeatedly in the forebrain with a crash cymbal. After you’re sufficiently softened you’re treated to the laid back, Queens of the Stone Age-esque backbeat of “Houseclouds,” which is one of the only tracks on the album you’d play for someone you didn’t want to confuse or insult. It’s skipping snare, drowsy melody and smooth pace make it a surprisingly “normal” (see: not typical Liars) song that actually goes down easy. “Sailing to Byzntium” is a slumping, trip-hoppy lament that is as good as anything that’s come out of the Bristol scene in years.

As my old burn-out sensei would have said (had he not had his lips wrapped around a makeshift Coke can bong), defying convention is a necessary element in keeping modern music vibrant. Amid a self-importantly hip sea of bands that simply rip off the past, Liars cultivates, improves and mutates the time-tested methods of feedback, reverb, and stripped-down production to evolve noise rock and, yes, the avant-garde, while still maintaining a relevance and general appeal. Their power lies not in their ability to create music that can clear out a party or bring small children to shuddering tears, but in their constant reevaluation of what music can be. So while Liars’ music may not always be an easy listen, as long as they’re committed to shunning the status quo they will always be making music. And those of us who dig those avant-garde rock sounds will be happy.