Tu Fawning – Hearts on Hold

Ah, to live in Portland, Oregon. Famed for its breweries and the plethora of incredible bands it has produced (The Decemberists and The Shins to name just two), it has, in this reviewer’s mind anyway, been built up to be the most perfect place on earth. It sounds like the place where people hang out in environmentally sustainable coffee restaurants, form bands on a whim, then get hammered on local brewskis and do it all again the next day.

Listening to Portland residents Tu Fawning, however, you’d be forgiven to think that it was a place where people rarely leave the house out of sheer existential angst and despair over how we relate to each other in this day and age. This songwriter collective have put together a debut album vibrating with raw emotion, but not lacking in knowingly employed stylistic tricks.

Hearts on Hold, it’s fair to say, relies more on ambient noise and minimalistic, unusual instrumentation than on catchy choruses, but there are moments of genuinely stirring melodies, such as on ‘Hand Grenade’, where lead singer Corrina Repp hammers home the hook with a sweet persistence, supported by little more than a perpetual drum roll.

‘Apples and Oranges’ is a beautiful duet with almost cinematic qualities – it sounds as if Repp and Joe Haege (founding member of 31Knots) sing their lines at each other across a room scattered with broken furniture. Elsewhere, ‘The Felt Sense’ has an intro reminiscent of Pearl Jam’s ‘W.M.A.’, but develops into a haunting piece of weirdo-pop with its own identity.

This album sounds a bit like it came together fairly quickly (as in, song sketches were brought in from the practise room, then experimented with for a bit and then laid down in the studio) – there is a sense of the visceral, instinctive rather than the calculated and the thought-out. This makes for a very intriguing listening experience, because you get the feeling that you’re listening to some very talented musicians exploring something that they’re not sure what to do with, an air of creativity that only exists in the context of these individuals hitting sticks and piano keys in the same room.

It’s not the most instant record you’ll hear in your life, but it’s definitely one that you’ll want to come back to. Maybe on that flight to Portland next year.