This Week in the Mercury
Monday, July 7, 2008
Vinyl / CD Reviews Tu Fawning - Secession
Posted by Ned Lannamann on Mon, Jul 7, 2008 at 1:05 PM
Tomorrow marks the CD release of Tu Fawning's debut mini-album, Secession, on Polyvinyl Records, but the vinyl version has been available for a few weeks on Portland's own Discourage Records imprint. I've been meaning to get up a review for some time as part of End Hits' ongoing vinyl review column, and here it is, late to the gate but hopefully still relevant even though the record will now be available in non-vinyl formats.
It's a six-song release (well, five, really, since the opener "Tiptoe" serves as an instrumental introduction to "Out Like Bats"), somewhat awkwardly straddling the line between EP and LP, but its shadowy old-time quality is perfectly suited to the vinyl medium, containing, as the press release states, "echoed melodies from a tarnished Victrola." Nowhere is this truer than on the monumental "I'm Gone," a plodding, ghostly track ripe with vibrato, and crackling, yellowed hues from a sneaky muted trumpet and some static mellotron chords. Corrinna Repp and Joe Haege trade verses as the noir backdrop swells and swirls. When the drums come in on the chorus, the horror soundtrack becomes a slow-motion tango, cymbals buzzing louder and louder like perfume enveloping and overwhelming an airless room.
LISTEN:
Tu Fawning - "Out Like Bats"
"Out Like Bats," too, contains a sense of menace, but is the closest thing to a rock song on the record, with an ascending guitar line and eighth-notes chopping on a piano. Low, grumbling brass create a warlike fanfare before dropping out for Repp's opening verse. The song slowly gains momentum through its two-chord structure as instruments drop in and out. Soon, the electric guitar is accompanied by nothing but hand-claps, playing a circling riff that swoops and soars like the titular bats.
"In Silence, We Reached the Palisades" begins with percussion like something from a spooky Yma Sumac record, then a chalk-white guitar clears the way for a duet between Repp and Haege, at times singing in unison, other times circling each other's lines without ever taking their eyes off each other. The song cultivates a mood, and sustains it, but doesn't explode it in the way that "I'm Gone" or "Out Like Bats" do so satisfyingly.
"The Sound You Warn," which begins with a simple phrase that sounds like a possessed player piano taking matters into its own hands, moves into a beautiful chorus with violins and wordless backing vocals, for what may perhaps be the most reassuring moment on a decidedly alienating-sounding record. A clock ticks after the next verse, steady and ominous, before the swelling chorus returns and the rounded chords of the piano clear the way for a moaning, chanted vocal coda.
The final track, "Diamond in the Forest," again uses the sound of antique piano, along with a dry reverbless Repp vocal, for a parlor song that could double as a hymn for an occult ceremony. Repp's operatic trill gives her a foreign, unhuman quality. A piano solo comes in, and meanders a bit, and then the song falls off the tracks with Repp hitting wordless high notes and the piano scampering through some runs; it sounds like they're warming up before a performance. The song does return for a final verse, but the studiousness of the song's first half has given way to a frantic quality that undermines the spooky, still-life nature of the tune.
It's really the only weak point on a record that, otherwise, feels far too short. Tu Fawning are supposedly working on their debut full-length, and the high points of this record ("I'm Gone," "Out Like Bats," "Sound You Warn") are so good that one can't help but get excited, and also a little wondrous that these songs were relegated to a release that may end up being less prominent. Maybe they'll be on the full-length; they should be.
Tu Fawning plays at the Thin Ice Collective artists' reception at Gallery Homeland this Friday, July 11, and at the Doug Fir on July 23.
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