Tu Fawning

Tu Fawning   “Out Like Bats”     

from Secession (Polyvinyl)

shore more than beach// Out Now

(review/ interview/comments, orig. pub. May 2008)

“Tu Fawning” may be translated as: “You Fawning.” “You, Fawning!?” “Too Fawning.”  “Well, tuf awning.” All and none of the above apply, equally well and swell. Tu Fawning give mean ol’ meanings the brush-off, when they get too tiresome, always hovering around like that. (But those that aren’t crushed by lack of reverence may come along if they can.) Tu Fawning get it already: do your homework, look both ways, life sucks and then you die, yadda-yadda—but why stop and stoop to be conquered by that stuff, when you can keep a-going, with your own scores to settle. It’s a faith, a hope,  a kind of romance, but no charity ball in sight. Tu Fawning’s co-leaders are chanteuse-guitarist Corrina Repp and multi-instrumentalist-vocalist Joe Haege, fortified by their fellow Portland music vets Toussaint Perrault on horns and guitar, Liza Reitz on piano and violin. Repp has also sung backup on several records by Haege’s other group, 31Knots, including their recent Worried Well. That set takes off at midpoint, when “Strange Kicks” projects frustration, confrontation, and stubbornness into a Weillier guise: it’s a musical portrait of the ever-hungry Man, so just stick him with a paper horn, for the dark flamboyance of a party in the face of facing down and ‘fessing up—whatever Bog Brother and the Dead Reality Police want, yessir, if they can follow these cats and kitties on through “Opaque,” “Worried But Not Well, “ and the mysterious instrumental closer, “Between 1& 2.” But there are (several) other songs that don’t work so well. Tu Fawning’s debut, Secession, lacks Worried Well’s sardonic, sometimes wistful humor, and the companionable tumble of voices and instruments rolling its better tracks, but, for the most part, Secession is better focused, with Repp’s voice in the foreground of a taut, sensuous, coppery chamber combo sound (where Haege makes a better backup singer and occasional duet partner, than as 31Knots’ soloing lead singer). And Secession is an EP, as it should be, ending before its ceiling-zero atmospheres and structures can get (too) oppressive, while Worried Well tends to wander too far, but it’s a good school for scandal, and hooky.

     So, the tag that greets us on Tu Fawning’s MySpace page, unlike most such, actually pertains: “Melodramatic popular songs/show tunes/minimalism.” If you “show tunes” to mean “Somebody who knows her Nico and Neko and Threepenny Opera too,” and take “minimalism” to mean “self-discipline. Although minimalism’s sister monotony  sometimes licks grim valentines and iron boots with dirge-like beats. But a dirge can be a march, and nothing can stop Tu Fawning from getting to track 5, “In Silence We Reach The Palissades.” The latter can be a wall of tall pointy stakes, put up in defense, or like the Palisades, sixty miles of sheer cliffs along the Hudson. A not unlikely dead end, either way. Except track 6, “Diamond In The Forest, “ commands our horny, dented voyagers further, with the pianist’s left-hand dirges, and a right handful of glittering prizes, that spill and skitter on ahead, lighting the way for refractive visions: “And your heart is in the city, but your heart has many names.” The music, however, doesn’t end with a fade, or a period, but curves like a question mark, toward the future, and back to…

…Our designated spotlight track, “Out Like Bats,” in which Corrina Repp’s vivid voice spotlights some seemingly garbled phrases, garbled as written, apparently. Sure sounds like,  “And the sea, that you drag, on their feet, can (or is it “can’t,” and who cares) be found,” how’s that for an opening line? But the next line, “You fool (or “fold”?) the blindside, the side (or “sigh”?) isn’t the sound you like,” starts to make sense (honest), when you hear the rest of the song, because the blind side or sigh, the eternal last gasp and garble of breath and expression keeps coming back, in the dreary-ass mereness of cyclic time. Haege joins her to affirm: “And the last time it came, like bats from a cave…words in an echo chain, echo chain, echo chain…” Our restless princess isn’t just making faces at mortality’s droppings, she’s a witness, and must testify, “In caves I see you come and you go, in caves I feel you far below…the sky isn’t the sound you like,” that’s why and where she’s gotta fly, or march, anyway.

Tu Fawning’s Corrina Repp on “Out Like Bats”:

How do you think “Melodramatic popular songs/show tunes/minimalist” might apply to this song in particular?

We actually chose those combinations of words more because we liked them, not necessarily because we thought they applied. I just loved the term “melodramatic popular song.” I guess in a way they are kind of fitting. Maybe we should start writing more show tunes.

“Out Like Bats” started out being the EP’s intro, which is called “Tip Toe.” Usually when we play the song live, the two parts go together. When putting together the EP, we decided to make them separate tracks. I wrote the beginning lead guitar part, then it turned into an entire song from there. Probably, in terms of arranging, it’s the song we spent the most time with. That was the first or second song Joe and I wrote when we started out as a duo; when we added Liza and Toussaint, their parts came very quick. It felt very natural. The entire song was written/arranged before we went in the studio. Being that we all have jobs, most things have to be mapped out beforehand. Recording with Kevin Robinson (of Viva Voce) was such a treat though, the whole EP definitely turned out better than we had hoped, but also gives us a better idea of where we want to go with the full length.