Tu Fawning: Secession

Tu Fawning
Secession
Polyvinyl
2008-07-08

My roommate pointed me towards Tu Fawning back when they were just a name and a demo recording of “I’m Gone”. That was all it took. Wearing out the grooves on that MP3 we knew we’d hit some kind of magic: sparse, spooky, textured with voice and motif. Shortly thereafter the core duo (of many-project-involved Portlanders Corina Repp and Joe Haege) expanded to a quartet and issued 200 copies of their debut 12″ on the Discourage label. This tiny release apparently enticed the alert folks over at Polyvinyl enough to re-release it, both as a 12″, and, for the first time, on CD. Given a full studio session to expand and embellish the unease of those early demos for the original release, Tu Fawning have only heightened their rich sense of dramatic tension. The songs end up feeling distinctly Gothic, not in the eye-liner-and-angst sense we’ve had since the ’80s, but more in the 18th century literary sense, of mysterious disquiet and bookshelves that spin to reveal previously unimagined intrigue.

RATING 7 / 10