"Bullets", by Tunng. Lately, a mutually advantageous three-way arrangement has been going on in my life. It works like this:
1. Somebody buys, or is sent, the most recent CD by Tunng.
2. That person, whoever they may be, takes that CD into the second-hand CD store in the centre of Canberra.
3. They, in their wisdom, price it five or six dollars below what they charge for other comparable new releases that come their way.
4. I find it and buy it.
This has happened twice now. Tunng's first album I found in the usual way (I call it "research"), having first become aware of them by way of their cover of Tim Buckley's "No Man Can Find The War". I soon became hooked. Each of the second and third albums were obtained, in corporeal form, by way of the abovementioned arrangement. The second album didn't affect me the same way the first one did. The third (and most recent), "Good Arrows", takes them right back to the top of the class. I suppose one has to label things these days, and "folktronica" is a term that could have been made for Tunng, with their blend of glitches and blips and an early-Fairport Convention sensibility combining in a seamless but unexpected (and fundamentally "new" – how often can you say that?) whole.
"Bullets" is a fine example of what they can do. Listening to the album again now, the song no longer stands out quite so strongly, but that is only because the entire album is so bloody good.
The lesson here, for me, is that I must dig out the second album again and treat it with the respect it most likely deserves. The lesson here for you is, I hope, obvious.
