It's very possible I'm the wrong person to review this LP, based on my current penchant for the works of Swans and the fact that I saw Tunng a few months ago and was compelled to walk out of their performance after approximately four songs, as they sounded somewhat tame after a preceding sonic blast from the mighty Six Organs of Admittance.

There's also a terribly twee side to them, and the dire tag 'folktronica' banded about -almost making me want to lapse into a stereotype of the kind of person who would listen to Tunng: those beautiful people who loiter around niche festivals with a working knowledge of Carob, utterly decaffeinated and waiting for the next trip to Bali; probably working in the media or in the designer papoose trade..
Plus, there's plenty of that perky stuff from Tunng here - the ideal band for a festival like The Green Man. And there's nothing wrong with that. But material like opener 'Hustle', the annoying 'Sashimi', and the tepid electronica of 'By Dusk They Were in the City' conform to stereotype and have me reaching for an early Swans live recording.

To be fair, there's an interesting expansion in sound here - a wide array of instrumentation and genre expanding on the well received Good Arrows album, their appearance on the celebrated Imagined Village-project and a recent collaboration with world music gods Tinariwen (the latter featuring on the DVD of this LP). They also managed to make a Bloc Party song sound decent with their take on 'The Pioneers'..

Still being fair, there are some interesting things here - the brass on 'It Breaks' is a particular joy, as is the odd way the vocals shift from female to male on 'The Roadside', sounding a bit like Syd Barrett hanging around with The Beta Band towards the end. Best of all is 'Don't Look Down or Back', which is simply a very well written and arranged song - the chorus even feels pretty anthemic and the kind of thing that might make the Radio 2 playlist. Plus there's some lovely percussive clatter from the twin drummers including former Chapterhouse member Ashley Bates.

And Then We Saw Land isn't really the kind of album that's doing it for me at present, which is not to say it's a bad album or warrants a petty critical hex from myself. I can see Tunng expanding their audience while managing to retain their devoted cult audience built over the preceding albums. Perfectly pleasant, which is obviously no good for a flawed unpleasant soul such as my own. Now where did I put my copy of Filth?