In the four years since Tunng’s last album, ‘Dead Club’, Mike Lindsay has had an inspired period. In addition to his collaboration with Laura Marling as LUMP and an album from his supergroup Supershapes, his production paw-prints have been all over some of the finest albums of the 2020s: Anna B Savage’s ‘in/FLUX’, William Doyle’s ‘Springs Eternal’ and Dana Gavanski’s ‘Late Slap’. Here, he returns to his work as part of six-piece band Tunng for the eighth album of their twenty-year career, ‘Love You All Over Again’, which sees them revisiting the folktronica sound that they played a significant role in developing.
Starting with a sample saying, “they speak in a tongue they don’t understand” is a mischievous beginning to the album and the first of its ten tracks, ‘Everything Else’. It is a song that exemplifies Tunng’s charms. It manages to seamlessly blend acoustic guitars with electronic beats and horn like synths. What ought to be a complete mess with one part in 4/4 and another in 5/4 creates a polyrhythmic mega loop, plus added piano chords in 6/4 become a rich sonic tapestry that is complex yet intuitive. On top there is a childlike wonder to the reverb-free vocals of Becky Jacobs and lyricist Sam Genders with a stream of consciousness, joyous yet questioning set of words (“we’re high on life… we send our joy like tiny kites…why do we play this infernal game of joy and fear?”)
A recurring song character from throughout Tunng’s career, Jenny, makes a reappearance in ‘Didn’t Know Why.’ To metallic beats and guitar chords with a passing resemblance to Simon and Garfunkel’s ‘The Sound of Silence’, she swallows a car, a fly and a TV. The song has the air of nursery rhyme at their darkest, especially in its repeated refrain of “Wake up in the morning / everybody eat your lungs and heart.”
This winning combination of machine and emotions is maintained with ‘Sixes’, its electronic shifts recalling High Llama’s shapeshifting ‘Hey Panda.’ Its sweet vocal grooves slide over 1970s library music synth sounds, setting 27 on the DX7 smothered in tape echo. ‘Snails’ contains some surreal imagery (“Vacuum clean the muddy puddles”) over a captivating melange of banjos, guitars and woodwind, ending with the line that gives the album its title. Building from folk guitar picking, ‘Laundry’ adds nagging synths and sonorous woodwind, conjuring its own distinct, marvellously odd universe. The instrumental ‘Drifting Memory Station’ is named in tribute to the DMS, a machine made by SOMA Laboratories that rearranges loops and creates generative rhythms. While clarinets and electronics add to the eerie mood, the lack of vocals mean it lacks the emotional contrasts that the other tracks manifest.
One of the record’s most charming songs, ‘Deep Underneath’ combines guitar picking with warped synths. The drowsy harmonising between Jacobs and Genders balances on the precipice between sweet and unsettling so the line “we are in your blood” seems an apt reflection on how the song stealthily seeps into the heart. That mood is maintained on ‘Levitate a Little’ which begins with the startling imagery, “twenty ravens in the basement / eating crisps and drinking beer.” It has the feel of Jackanory meeting The Wicker Man while also calling on the listener to “meditate on sadness / don’t let your madness keep the crown.” In contrast, the electronics of ‘Yeekeys’ have a rave-like quality, sliced together with more surreal notions (“we’ll build a boat out of red wine and honey / sail all the way to the moon.”)
Changing mood again, the album ends with ‘Coat Hangers’, looping guitars with synths, beats that sketch a hinterland between meditative and fidgety, and snippets of band conversations recorded in a wardrobe on tour. In totality, ‘Love You All Over Again’ is an album that justifies being allowed time to work its mesmeric magic, strange yet accessible, washing over the listener, casting it spells.
Tunng: Love You All Over Again – Out 24 January 2025 (Full Time Hobby)
– Didn’t Know Why [Official Video]
I was editor of the long-running fanzine, Plane Truth, and have subsequently written for a number of publications. While the zine was known for championing the most angular independent sounds, performing in recent years with a community samba percussion band helped to broaden my tastes so that in 2021 I am far more likely to be celebrating an eclectic mix of sounds and enthusing about Made Kuti, Anthony Joseph, Little Simz and the Soul Jazz Cuban compilations as well as Pom Poko and Richard Dawson.
