Album Review

Tu Fawning – I Know You Now

• 24th Dec 2010

More of that slightly weird, experimental, industrial stuff, this time from Portland, Oregon band Tu Fawning.

The quartet is a collective founded by Joe Haege (31Knots, Menomena) and Corrina Repp, and joined last year by Toussaint Perrault and Liza Rietz. Apparently their upcoming album together, “Hearts on Hold”, sounds completely different from anything they each might have done before.

“I Know You Now”, the first single off the album, gives us vocals with that 1920s crackly, distant microphone sound, mixed with a stabby electric guitar, rattly percussion and some rather interesting vintage samples. Something in there sounds a bit like a fairground organ?

It’s reminiscent of Portishead, or White Town’s “I Could Never Be Your Woman”, but quite a bit stranger. Echoey and odd, edgy and discordant, with stridently bitter vocals, and coldly harsh lyrics. It’s also missing a hearty melody, so feels slightly monotonous.

The guitar is a delight, cutting through the eerie soup of samples, but on the whole this track’s a bit lacking. It’s intriguingly strange, but not hauntingly beautiful. It all feels just a bit too clever, too intellectual, too clinical.

Like an unadorable Edward Scissorhands, it’s interestingly different but just not terribly loveable. While I might not be one for easy listening, this single’s just a bit too hard.