You could make a case that all popular music is an argument about
technology — how far we should take it, what role it should play, what you
lose when you use technology rather than unadorned voice and instruments
(which, come to think of it, are a form of technology in themselves). The
question really surfaces, though, with bands like Tunng, who combine the
most traditional forms of folk music with electronic flourishes in ways
that seem so natural that you wonder where the borders are. This is the
kind of music where human voices morph into computerized washes of sound,
where the simplest, loveliest sorts of folk harmonies lie comfortably atop
the blurps and twitches of electronic beats, and where it all fits together,
almost magically. You can compare Tunng's iridescent tunes to Manitoba
(now Caribou) or the Beta Band, but this band is rooted more in deep folk
modality, luminous as Gary Higgins in spots, but structured with space-age
rhythms and accents.
Mother's Daughter & Other Songs percolates along, remaining intense
and driving even at low volumes. There's a pulse to it that gives its
tunes a modern edge, even when the melodies sound like 1960s British
folk. "Fair Doreen" is perhaps the most folky. It glows with
Pentangle-ish guitar chords and close harmonies, yet its crackling, popping
electro beat moves the piece forward. "Pool Beneath the Pond" layers
precise, world-beat-ish drums with a looped guitar phrase in a way that is
jigsaw-complicated yet full of air and light. And the title track,
"Mother's Daughter," takes a beautiful fragment of a woman's voice and
transforms it into electronic squiggles mid-tone, making it wonderfully
natural and strange at the same time. This vocal sound floats atop
abrasive, burped-out percussion and radiant, resonant guitar chords, its
tone stretched and mutated in the background. It lends a ghostly,
visionary quality to the verse, when it comes, making a song that could be
CSN-conventional into something unearthly and mysterious.
One of the disc's highlights comes near the end in "Code Breaker," where,
over a clipped and mantra-ish guitar line, the singer whispers lyrics about
the limits of science and the mysteries of human attraction. Though
referencing double-helix discoverers and quantum theorists, the cut seems
to come down on the side of love, unknowable as always but communicated
through gorgeous fragments of song.
|
