TLike The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society, Tunng’s fifth album is set in a fictional village – but where Ray Davies luxuriated in bucolic nostalgia, Tunng convey a landscape of vague disquiet and a cast of misfits. There’s the girl unravelled by a kiss in Bloodlines; the sweet-sour woman in Trip Trap, described in such fairytale language you wonder if she’s a witch; the truculent gang at the heart of The Village, who ‘don’t believe what they have sold us’. The music is shaped by the characters, with rhythm particularly affected: in The Village, percussive clicks and snapping chords power across electronic samples until the rhythm gets trapped in a loop; in Follow Follow and So Far From Here, both depicting village outsiders, guitars, keyboards and vocals are syncopated, creating an atmosphere of slipperiness and shift. It’s such a nuanced album that it can feel undemonstrative, with even the choruses lacking impact – but tha