Hearts on Hold

It’s clear from the opening seconds of TU FAWNING’s debut full length, HEARTS ON HOLD, that there’s something very, very different about this Portland, Oregon band. The two note trumpet refrain of . Multiply A House’ that echoes like the distant sound of a battlefield, the ghostly chanting writhing around it as though in a trance, the funereal drums that boom in the background and the harmonies emerging as the chorus unfurls: these are not the sound of your everyday indie rock act. In fact, nothing on HEARTS ON HOLD is quite like anything you’ll recognize, and that’s the very reason why its world is so overwhelming, so enticing, so exotic, so addictive. Formed three years ago by Portland musical mainstays Corrina Repp and Joe Haege – who between them cover piano, drums, percussion, guitar, vocals and samples, and who have carved out cult reputations as a solo artist and with 31 Knots respectively, amongst other things – the band have been making a name for themselves in the North West ever since, refining and perfecting their unusually otherworldly, primitively spiritual sound. “Trying to find the exact words to describe us still seems to be difficult,” they admit. But with their influences ranging from Gamelan music and tribal percussion to Tom Waits – “for the way he’s brought back melodies from a bygone era” – to the Boswell Sisters and Jay-Z, one can see the sheer monumental task of placing that in a little box. Theirs is a sound that is not unlike Portishead or Liars; bands that are rooted in an otherworldly soundscape and yet refuse to be tied to one aesthetic. “We knew from the beginning that we didn’t want a stereotypical instrumentation,” Repp explains about the moment that they decided to move from working on one another’s records to making their own music together. “We both felt like we were reaching the end of a creative chapter in our existing projects, and we had so many common influences that we hadn’t tapped into.” Their numbers, however, limited the