Live Review

Tu Fawning – Cargo, London

• 31st May 2012

Tu Fawning don’t just perform on stage, they explode. Four firecrackers of musicians going intensely kablooey, showering us with bursts of darkly vibrant sound. Despite the soulful, sometimes melancholy, quality of their albums, live they light up the room, and fill it with enormously contagious energy.

This unique foursome from Portland, Oregon are touring with their second album ‘A Monument’, and played to a nicely sized and receptive crowd at London’s Cargo on Tuesday night. Each is a multi-instrumentalist and all four provide vocals, although they’re undoubtedly led by the chiming-yet-sultry voice of Corrina Repp.

They crammed themselves onto the tiny stage, so surrounded by drums, horns, guitars, violins and keyboards that Repp and fellow guitarist/drummer Joe Haege needed to jump off into the crowd to swap places on drums. But far from retreating behind their musicianship, these guys launched into a set that pulsed with so much passion, so much energy and movement, that this makeshift cage of instruments could barely contain them.

It’s impossible not to feel drawn to a band like this. The immediacy of these four very lively bodies on stage somehow imbues the whole experience with a kind of grounded humanity. Lyrics and melodies that border on woefully ethereal (a friend once described Tu Fawning as “too much like the howling wind”) become movingly gritty and easy to relate to. Repp’s voice, and the two grimy guitars, reveal a surprisingly rocky, husky edge. Combined with the sophistication of the keyboards and samples, and the intricacy of tiny pieces of brass and strings, it sounds great, it looks great, and you feel great.

A Tu Fawning gig is a gig not to be missed. This is a clever, interesting band making beautiful, soulful music. And live, they’re just plain good for the soul.

Photo: Christine Van Der Merwe