Faun Fables Albums (4)
What The Critics Say
Given their back catalog, Faun Fables have created a singular musical universe, one that is evocative of other times, places, and eras. Transit Rider takes that enigmatic aesthetic to a new extreme -- that last word cannot be overstated. Transit Rider is a truly obsessive song cycle and story that Dawn McCarthy developed for theater and performed in 2002, and has been resuscitated. She and Nils Frykdahl (the core of Faun Fables) have developed a traveling work that features four players, films and music from the band, and from other sources. This is an eerie work that draws on ages-old Anglo and Eastern European folk traditions, vanguard rock, the cabaret works of Kurt Weill, and the humor of Erik Satie. "Transit Theme" opens the 13-cut production as McCarthy sings, "I am a transit rider goings and comings at all hours, in the light and in the dark, wait for my train but don't have to park. I am a transit rider, goings and comings they're all the same..." She's accompanied by Frykdahl's guitar and backing vocals, her auto harp, percussion, and bass, and the strange sound of trumpets and violins that float and hover, denoting history, tradition, and their disappearances, as everything continues forward without purpose, without destination. Motion, space, time, dissolution, experience, and the edge of sanity are explored as the ebb and flow of continuance without cessation evolves and returns in a broken circle. The cover songs, "House Carpenter" for instance, is a traditional song that has many versions in which Jesus waits and celebrates the return of his lover Pan! On "In Speed," Frykdahl and McCarthy share vocals for different parts of a truly manic journey through fear that results in isolation and detachment, and sprinting away from anything that touches the transit rider beyond the quick witness of everything going by in a blur, the refrain "Let's speed up, without grace and running" with voices, howling, moaning, shouting, and operatically singing as the track goes off the rail and becomes unhinged with its nearly orchestral instrumentation. The set's longest tune immediately follows; "Taki Pejzaz (Such a Landscape)" was written in 1963 by the Polish songwriter Zygmunt Conieczny, from a poem by Antoni Szmidt and translated by McCarthy and Agnieszka Sowinski. Its haunting folk forms sweep through observations of the landscape as something to be seen, not felt, as the "tangling pine trees...stand mute and useless." The vanguard rock & roll burns itself into folk tradition with crashing tom toms, electric guitars, flutes, and more. McCarthy's nearly unbearable otherworldly alto voice chanting, wailing, and finally moving to contralto, is transformed but unaware. So is the transit rider, a virtual encyclopedia of seeing without knowing. One could argue the concept is overly done by the cycle's nadir, but that would be missing the point. The transit rider, who continually furthers the journey without getting anywhere, grows old without experiences. The music and the voices provide the darker and humorous side of such a life. In the final song, "I'd Like to Be," McCarthy and Frykdahl whimsically engage fantasy: "I'd like to be/like the wind/singing around...like the wind/and touch everything...." But it's flesh and blood moving through these thoughts without resembling them. Simple acoustic six- and twelve-string guitars sing this song, written by Souer Sourire, also from 1963. The transit rider finishes the journey where she started, admiring, escaping into thought, and ultimately seeking no destination but the spirit of motion itself. This one will test Faun Fables fans, but it is utterly wonderful, engaging, disturbing, and funny; it merely needs to be heard on its own terms. This is not so much freak- or acid-folk, as it is modern music, evolved from rock, folk and pop, composed and transformed into something all of its own creation. ~ Thom Jurek, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
Dawn "the faun" McCarthy describes the songs on her 1998 debut as "near and dear to my heart; old traveling companions that helped me get around the big strange world." That sentiment rings true on the seven original and four traditional offerings on Early Song, a naked portrait of an artist in the making that's equally as naïve as it is powerful. Here McCarthy, always unafraid to experiment vocally, finds herself caught between the liquid crooning of Sarah McLachlan and the primal howl that would go on to define her later works. When she's on -- the blissfully creepy "Old Village Churchyard" -- there's no turning away, and it's all the more impressive when, in the case of the serpentine "Apple Trees," the song is self-penned. In fact, it's her words that shine the brightest here. The bawdy "Ode to Rejection," a nod to the blurry line between on-stage entertainer and off-stage human being that finds the protagonist musing, "I was ready to love you/Probably too soon/Took your sighs as yessin'/Let my wilds bloom," is both irreverent and sad, a lesson learned by a young wanderer forced to grow an inch with every mile. However, that same youthful approach stops versions of "O Death" and "Honey Baby Blues" dead in their tracks; the feeling may be there, but the lines in the face have yet to appear. Despite these misfires, Early Song succeeds because of its indifference to hitting any kind of target. Naïveté is infectious when in the hands of a future pagan goddess, and besides, you can't give listeners a line like "What bliss/With it I charge the very air" without leaving smiles on their faces. ~ James Christopher Monger, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
In the early 1970s, there were numerous obscure British folk-rock albums with an out-of-time quality treading in mysticism. Family Album is like those albums, yet even more out-of-time in a way, considering there were very few artists on either major or indie labels doing anything like this in 2004. You get the feeling you've stumbled on a musical play in a forest that's enacting some mythical tragedy or epic adventure, though there's no actual central plot or story tying the songs together. Vintage British folk-rock is the musical touchstone, as many of the songs feature similar kinds of folky melodies with an ancient haunted (and sometimes morbid) quality that sound as if they've drifted into modern times by mistake, as well as fairly acoustic-based instrumentation. It's atmospheric, but not all that enchanting: the songs can be overly precious, with a tense melodrama to the vocals and melodies that sometimes makes you feel like Fables is wrestling with an invisible demon the audience can't see. Fables sings most of the material in a high though not exceptional voice that again recalls many British folk-rock sirens of yore, occasionally stepping aside for collaborator Nils Frykdahl to take lead vocals in a less effective rough growl. The menu of storytelling-like songs is certainly varied, and it's not all folk-rock, going into opera and eerie gospel on "Higher," theatrical music that sounds like a combination of Judy Collins and Grace Slick on "Carousel with Madonnas," Nick Cave-like angst on Frykdahl's "Rising Din," and new wave-ish dance rhythms on the cover of Brigitte Fontaine's "Eternal." It all adds to the weirdness of a record that's genuinely strange, even if the results don't seem to match its ambitions. ~ Richie Unterberger, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
If they had been born 20 years earlier, the West Coast duo of Dawn "the faun" McCarthy and Nils Frykdahl would have been regulars at the Hotel California. Like two deserters from the British political punk group Crass taking refuge in the film The Wicker Man, Faun Fables are myth-making separatists with a Pagan agenda. To say that the songs on Mother Twilight reside in the ghostly predusk is an understatement, as they exist in a realm that transcends even the netherworld. McCarthy delivers each lyric like an incantation, often surprising herself with wordless sheep-calls and primeval yodeling. On the breathtaking "Sleepwalker," she seems as blissfully unaware as the protagonist, leaving the listener to carry the burden of her impending waking, and when she announces "my arms out before me, the bushes don't ignore me," it's more than apparent that she's long gone. Once out of the gate, the record plays like a dream diary, chronicling everything from conversations with moths to being chased by ambiguous beasts through the forest. Frykdahl's arsenal of instruments punctuates each new locale with a sense of urgency, often replying directly to McCarthy's melodies, then daring her to follow his. Mother Twilight can be a difficult listen; it's intense, evil, intimate, and brave, and those are adjectives that rarely apply to the serpentine world of modern music. Fans of Comus, the Incredible String Band, and early Dead Can Dance will find much to love here, but those who meet the evening with the door cracked, the light on, and the floor beneath the bed inspected need not embark on this journey. ~ James Christopher Monger, All Music Guide
