Faun Fables
The Transit Rider (Drag City)
By Jim Keller
Published: June 9th, 2006 | 12:33pm
On her fourth album The Transit Rider, Dawn McCarthy (aka Faun Fables) rides the rail as she paints NYC with her medieval palette. Largely known for haunting melodies tinged with images of fair maidens and all things of yore, McCarthy kicks it up with a full-color look at the NYC subway as interpreted through outsider eyes. From the repetition, noise and fleeting crowds, she stays her course with longtime Fables cohort, Nils Frykdahl (Sleepytime Gorilla Museum) carving a path as intricately woven as any handiwork.
Living in NYC it’s nearly impossible to smell the same air, hear the same voices and get an objective view of the vast cityscape; enter The Transit Rider. Having been introduced to the underground world of NYC in 1994, McCarthy began writing about her experiences, culminating in a San Francisco theater show in 2002 directed by Allen Willner, and now this album.
Each track imparts a story; whether it’s the inquisitive virgin-straphanger’s mounting anxiety on “The Questioning” or the lament of a vulnerable rider lulled to sleep by the accustomed transit bedlam on “Dream on the Train”, McCarthy comfortably accesses the heads of diverse New Yorkers. The album’s instruments and samples serve as punctuation to tales with enough fortitude to stand alone while adding to the mood, like the trembling guitars rising above percussive thunder on “Taki Pejzaz” (Such a Landscape).
Though The Transit Rider is both interesting and evocative, based on past Fables’ puppet sideshows, I wouldn’t miss the newly adapted theatrical production slated to tour alongside it.
Issue #25
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