Artist: Tunng

Album: …And Then We Saw Land

Reviewer: Andrew Gaerig

Pitchfork, 2010

Writing Disorders: Jargon Palsy, Ambiguity Sickness








Stuffiest Phrases: “factoring in the tendency,” “might say more about the prevalence of folk and electronic elements in modern indie”

Wow: “sort of remarkable”




Andrew, I noticed you had two reviews up on Pitchfork yesterday, so maybe this weakling is just a sign of being overworked. Good news! I hear now’s a great time to book a vacation away from writing lab reports on albums. The travel rates are low to sunny destinations where people listen to music for fun, not vivisection. After all, if you hadn’t tried to make this review into some profound commentary on a band struggling to fit into the “avant-folk crowd” and instead just focused on how the music affected you, it might not have been so awful. Maybe you wouldn’t have penned crud like this:

“Tunng now record folk songs that are sweetly… sweet. That’s an indictment, but less of one than it seems.”

Wow, thanks for clarifying. I was one step away from phoning my congressman to redress that whopper. Let me get this straight. Not only did you have to explicitly state you were indicting something, but you had to reassure us it’s less of an indictment than one that wasn’t clear enough in the first place? Are you soft in the head, Gaerig, or just full of sawdust?

From most angles here, I’d say the latter. I suppose plugging holes in logic isn’t a pressing concern for writers on a website that doesn’t allow comments, but I’m still annoyed. To wit:

“Tunng probably never deserved the laborious mini-genres they’ve been tagged with, as they fit neatly in a tradition of British bands who have a slightly warped take on pastoral folk”

Oh, and slightly warped pastoral folk isn’t a laborious mini-genre? I’m pretty sure you just tagged the species, genus, and family there, Linnaeus. Uncork the champagne; we’ve got a new organism for the books!

“Tunng’s fourth album, …And Then We Saw Land, contains few of the appealing crevices and pocks of their early work, but sees them developing as songwriters.”

This is getting ridiculous. How does an album of sounds “see” anything? That’s like saying a patched-up shoe sees a man developing as a cobbler. If you’re adamant about letting a noun like “album” lead the active voice, at least say that it shows, demonstrates, exhibits, reveals – that kind of stuff. Better yet:

“Tunng’s songwriting develops on their fourth album, …And Then We Saw Land.”

Golly, will you look at that! No anthropomorphizing and no vague references to “crevices and pocks” that could mean anything in music.  Are those the same “well-worn eccentricities” that you gave a cursory mention, or am I just not reading your filler closely enough? Oh well. If I struck out on those fluff bunnies, maybe I can boost my average down the line. There’s plenty of padding to go around. Check out these meaty insights:

“Tunng have outgrown and outlasted the restrictive genres they were once boxed into, but Saw Land struggles to find its place in a larger context.”

“Even factoring in the tendency for bands to grow less weird as they get older, Tunng’s move toward the middle is sort of remarkable.”

Here’s a fun activity, Andrew. Write out a list of all the adjectives you can think of and put the words “sort of” before each. It might be sort of illuminating. Before you do that though, tell your editor to check his BS filter. Looks like a whole lot got through the screen there. “Struggles to find its place in the larger context?” Wow, did you pay a buck ninety nine for that on QVC or did your dog write it? Two parts ambiguity isn’t the best recipe for a closing sentence.

Speaking of ambiguity, for someone who etched a decimal rating on this album with a laser, you don’t exactly make a strong case in the body.

“That’s an indictment, but less of one than it seems”

“songs that seem burlier”

“they seem a bit too Grizzly Bear”

“The Roadside” seems like something”

Andrew, I’m more likely to let an opinion writer out of the live well if he avoids absolutes, but if the word “seems” appears too much, it gives the impression he doesn’t know his ear from an anus. Maybe at this point you could have admitted you couldn’t see far enough up this band’s colon with your microscope and just said, “I liked this guitar riff” or “I didn’t care for that melody.” If people so dead-set on Grizzly Bear are going to skip this music, they’ll likely do it on the basis of sampling the songs, not your prose.

I’d love to stay, but it’s time to eat my Kashi, Andrew. Check Priceline for new low rates on that dream vacation to hemorrhoid-free music appreciation. It’s worth the price of admission.