The Transit Rider

Posted on 20th Sep 06 by Contributor | 0

Artist: Faun Fables
Author: Cian O Callaghan

Faun Fables The Transit Rider review 2006 "Drag City"

Leaving New York in 1997 Dawn "The Faun" McCarthy hit the road to find her own creative voice through travelling" writing and performing songs. During this period she nurtured a unique musical vision that united a sound from the ages with an otherworldly vocal delivery. The songs written during this time gestated into Dawn"s first album under the Faun Fables moniker. Released in 1999" Early Song displayed an eerie and frail folk tinged sound" backing McCarthy"s unique voice that crept out of the strange places the songs burrowed into to wrap around you like a thick fog.

McCarthy"s songs from this album caught the attention of Nils Frykdahl" a musician and voice artist with a background in theatre" and the two began collaborating in 1998" with a view to combining their different approaches to song writing.

Released earlier this year" The Transit Rider is the fullest expression of their collaboration to date. Acting as a song cycle inspired by the New York city subway system" many of the songs here originally premiered as a theatre show" which McCarthy developed and performed in 2002. And indeed the The Transit Rider contains a lot of theatrical elements" for example the call and response of "Questions" or the hushed monologue of "I no longer wish to". These theatrical leanings fuse with the folk tinged aesthetic of the Faun Fables cannon to create music that is entirely distinct" music that cartwheels ""In Speed"" and whistles ""Taki Pejzaz"" out of an anachronism and through a storm to emerge on the other side as something individual" exciting and unique.

The Transit Rider casts shadows and light over a backdrop of strummed guitar and eerily pitched instrumentation" while McCarthy"s pagan coloured voice comes on like a piercing call from the wild that reverberates around the chugging train system that we are sent constant aural reminders of throughout. A lyric from the Frykdahl penned "Roadkill" sums it up" But one of these mornings" you are going to rise up singing" a song that your grandfather knew" but your father forgot" and buried and was paved over by the grey road.

Mined from the past and shot through the present" The Transit Rider is a timeless collection of songs" a subconscious of all we have heard and never heard before. It is a trip around the track on a ghost train of musical ideas and lyrical imagery that grow into an intriguing aural experience that deepens with every listen.