This is Tunng...Magpie Bites and Other Cuts

British collective Tunng evolved over the course of six meticulously crafted studio albums, beginning with 2005's This Is... Tunng: Mothers, Daughter, and Other Tales, and slowly pushing forward over the years. The band would undergo huge shifts in lineup and geographic positioning, but their unique electro-acoustic sound always processed folk elements through glitchy electronics and merged organic instrumentation with computer-generated rhythmic counterparts. Their albums were long-labored events, arriving more infrequently as their tenure went on. Between proper albums, however, Tunng always offered up auxiliary material in the form of vinyl-only singles, hidden tracks, live sessions, and other miscellaneous work. Magpie Bites and Other Cuts collects 11 of these rare tunes released between 2004, not long after the band's inception, and 2018, the time of their sixth full-length Songs You Make at Night. While not flowing exactly like an album, there's a definite cohesion to the track listing. Songs are presented not chronologically, but with the general pacing and energy of the listening experience in mind. The album begins with SYMAN outtake "Heatwave," a bass-heavy take on Tunng's particularly fractured pop, with layers of vocal harmonies and digitally pitched-down vocal hooks. It's catchy and strange in the way much of their music has been from the beginning but perhaps a little too light to fit with the rest of the album. Only one other song from this era is included, the scattered ramble of "Bank Holiday." Whether it's a Bloc Party cover ("The Pioneers") a scratchy experiment ("Peanuts"), or a reworking of a traditional folk tune ("Death and the Maiden Retold"), every track has the crisp production and pastoral feel that touches almost all of Tunng's catalog. For a rarities compilation, there's not much in the way of experimental outliers, due in part to Tunng's hyper-focused approach to songcraft. Even songs recorded a decade apart feel decidedly of a piece, if lacking the conceptual threads that often tie together studio albums. An expanded limited-edition version of the compilation includes many more B-sides and rarities, but when gathered in one place, these 11 tracks offer an album's worth of satisfaction for any Tunng completist. First-timers curious about the band might want to start somewhere else, but Magpie Bites is much stronger than the average collection of B-roll footage. ~ Fred Thomas