Customer Reviews

Early Song

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When "Early Song" came out in 2004, the "freak folk" movement was only beginning and its roots were generally looked to in obscure acts from the 1960s or early 1970s, such as Linda Perhacs and Vashti Bunyan.

However, Faun Fables (or at least Dawn McCarthy) had actually been playing music for over a decade when the 1998 and 1999 recordings on "Early Song" were finally released to the public along with their 2004 Family Album. For those who expect something of the idiosyncratic, fierce folk of the masterful Mother Twilight, "Early Song" may prove at first somewhat anticlimactic - it certainly did for me. The music is much more rootsy than on "Mother Twilight", with less of the electric guitars and flutes that made that album amazingly enchanting. The rhythms of "Early Song" are also much less eccentric than on later Faun Fables albums.

Nonetheless, this more basic sound does not detract at all from the qualities that made "Mother Twilight" a genuine masterpiece, though it takes even more time to see them on "Early Song". Opener "Muse" is a perfect title for what Dawn McCarthy does, the mysterious persona it creates and shrieks of "ah, ah, ah" fitting the stark, even aggressive tone perfectly. Yet, later on "Muse" turns from aggression to beauty in a surprising way that I could not grasp at first.

"The Crumb" is quieter, but its eerie beauty, once you get into it, is hard to resist, and "Old Village Churchyard", the first of several traditional tunes, is classically traditional folk even with Dawn's soft, tickling vocals that carry folk songs in the classically intimate and personal manner that made them what they were. The darkly morbid tale fits in with Dawn's original material perfectly. "Apple Trees", however, is even better, and is even catchy despite its typically twilit theme of making love on a beautiful autumn night and keeping it unknown from the wider world. The lyrics are pure childlike poetry untainted by any sense of guilt - indeed they have an almost unique innocence. The way Dawn repeats each last line is, too, almost hypnotic.

"Only a Miner" is a standard Appalchian folk tune even if done in a classically dark tone to fine effect, but "Sometimes I Pray" takes us deep into the cathedral with its opening "ooh" chant and the plaintive guitar rhythm. The lyrics may seem odd for the title when Dawn sings "I'm a banquet/You're invited" but the sepulchral theme of so much of Faun Fables early work never goes far from the surface and when she sings "How far is suffering/From ecstasy" to the same simple rhythm. In contrast, "Honey Baby Blues" is as close to rock as Faun Fables ever travelled, but with "Lullaby for Consciousness" Dawn McCarthy showed that even at this early stage she had an amazing understanding of the human mind and its workings. Then the stark, almost punkish but acoustic "O Death" shows Faun Fables at their most passionate and despairing, whilst the Swiss traditional closer "Bliss" is simple and very fast in tempo, but the mysterious desire at the core of Faun Fables' music is as clear as ever when one listens carefully.

All in all, "Early Song" is a must-have if you like later Faun Fables, or such mystic muses past and present as Kate Bush or Spires That in the Sunset Rise. It is less instantly memorable and eccentric than "Mother Twilight", but almost if not quite so mystical and fierce.

i've seen Dawn perform live, and i really like her vibe ... rich, eclectic palette she paints with, really innovative