Comments of the Inner Chorus is the second full-length album from the British digital-folk collective Tunng, and as with all proper folktales it immediately plunges its audience deep into the phantasmal wilderness. Led by the duo of Mike Lindsay and Sam Genders, Tunng operate in a world where women can be transformed into hares, mysterious wind-up birds make front-page news, and true love inevitably leads to total doom. It soon becomes apparent, however, that what might appear to be an untouched stretch of primitive forest is in fact Tunng's well-manicured English garden, a genteel place where every microscopic detail has been carefully spaced and cultivated for maximum dramatic effect.
As on Tunng's 2005 debut Mother's Daughter...and Other Songs-- reissued in the U.S. earlier this year on Ace Fu-- this album is a well-crafted blend of grainy electronics, organic percussion (which evidently includes such instruments as twigs, teeth and seashells), snatches of sampled dialogue, and traditional British folk. Although Tunng's style owes much to folk ancestors the Incredible String Band and Nick Drake, each track on Comments of the Inner Chorus is so packed with variant instrumental textures that the album can more often resemble the pastoral interludes of Four Tet or the Notwist. The sheer density of the group's fractured, ever-shifting productions places heavy demands on its song structures, causing the over-chirpy "Red and Green" or the ill-conceived pastiche "Stories" to crumble under their own clunky weight.
Instead, Tunng are most in their element on tradition-steeped material like the wry, refracted murder ballads "Jenny Again" and "Sweet William". Over a vibrant bed of acoustic guitar and clacking typewriter keys, "Jenny Again" finds its murdered narrator placidly imagining his killer's new life. ("Change your name and find a job/ Marry Jenny in the spring/ Think about me now and then.") This same calm resignation is also reflected on the album's effervescent first single, "Woodcat". Here the singer learns that his girlfriend has been turned into a hare as punishment for some unnamed crime, and decides to undergo the same procedure himself so that they can be reunited, quietly repeating "we're in for a lovely time" with a contented sigh.
Throughout the album Tunng show as much interest in the storytelling process as in the stories themselves. In the middle of "The Wind-Up Bird" they interrupt their own choppy, mechanical flow to remind the narrator, "Tell me stories inside/ Lie if you like/ But make the details true in our minds." Heeding their own advice, Tunng frequently use their backing arrangements to mirror the lyrical action almost in the manner of a radio theater troupe. On "Sweet William" they rustle the pines with clattering sound effects and plaintive cello strains, while on the Tom Waits-like miniature "Man in the Box" they use banjo and an assortment of front porch percussion to rattle their coffin lids. And on the closing stowaway epic "Engine Room", the group's gentle folk is gradually overtaken by strange audio samples and a swelling, machinelike noise that mimics the patient grind of a submarine's engine, driving Tunng stealthily away in search of their next fictive adventure.
