Customer Reviews

Mother Twilight

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In some world where artistic merit and creativity are more important than commercial success, Dawn McCarthy and Nils Frykdahl would be household names. Collectively (Nils also plays in Sleepytime Gorilla Museum) known as Faun Fables, this duo plays enchanting songs that have magical lives all their own. Instrumentation is minimal. However, no sound is wasted and the result, along with McCarthy's lead vocals, is an extremely charming hour of eccentric acoustic music.
Fittingly, the first step into their world is entitled, "Begin." It is one of those "love it" or "hate it" songs, as it has a discordant guitar bouncing through it. Once you get past that one, though, you're in the shadows and rainbows for the remainder of the hour. Next is "Sleepwalker," which is probably the most accessible song on the disc (which doesn't mean it is accessible, though it mmight be considered catchy...compared to, say, an Ozric Tentacles song). One of the highlights of "Sleepwalker" is something that you don't hear very often. McCarthy makes a short series of vocal noises that sound like a cross between Syd Barrett's "cuckoo" or psychedelic hiccup sound on "Flaming" (from Pink Floyd's "Piper...") and a similar noise from the "Punch and Judy" show in one of the Marx Brothers' films. I won't bet that McCarthy planned it that way, but that's what it sounds like to me and I love it. "Beautiful Blade" is host to a wild breeze of amazing vocal harmonies that remind me of some of the more unusual harmonies on Queen albums.
Without giving away each song, let me summarize by saying that both Dawn and Nils are multi-instrumenalists (McCarthy is from a family of artists and musicians) and singers. Frykdahl sings harmonies and backs up his partner on various instruments, which, in the process, makes some great and extremely complementary music for McCarthy's captivating voice to dance around to.
This music suggests a forest of shadows. Sometimes the shadows peek out at you shyly from behind trees or bushes. Other times they dance gleefully. They're always beckoning for us to come and play.
More info awaits you at www.faunfables.net and you may querie or comment at info@faunfables.net

Although Faun Fables have been around for a lot longer than most of the "freak folk" artist whom they have come to be grouped with by the relatively few who know of them, it is only very recently that I have come to know anything about their work. Critics in general took very little or no notice of their work around the time "Mother Twilight" came out and, if they knew them at all, only came to them around the time of Family Album or the soundtrack Transit Rider.

This is a pity, because "Mother Twilight" possesses a most definite uniqueness and beauty that has been lost to a large extent from the more recent works when Nils Frykdahl takes over more of the vocals and songwriting. Whilst "Mother Twilight" does not have the fierce passion or unique instrumentation of Spires That in the Sunset Rise, it compensates completely with its wonderful, delicate beauty that manages like almost no other record to combine genuine softness and amazing power. This character is apparent from the first notes of opener "Begin" when an unusual Norwegian acoustic instrument combines with the siren-like voice of Dawn McCarthy to create a sonic experience that nobody has replicated. "Sleepwalker" uses beautiful percussion to combine with taut acoustic guitar to create, as Dawn herself had said, a fusion of ethnic folk musics from over the world into a unique sound. Third track "Shadowsound" is distinctly softer but loses very little in edginess just like, say "Sort Sands".

"Hela" shows Dawn moving to a tighter groove and even higher-pitched voice, but she sounds like a hymn singer even when she tells tales of being in the greatest distress on the last line "there's a Hela waiting in the underworld". "Traveller Returning" continues this hymnal, medieval sound and could be a more spartan Mellow Candle. "Train" welds the combination of passion and beauty into something even better than the first five tracks, and then "Beautiful Blade" is a genuine religious chant that sounds as perfect as it would from Patti Smith at her most religious.

The title tune is a slow-burn epic of motherly fear that shows how McCarthy is like few others at her best dealing with the most everyday of subjects, and then "Moth" is a truly stately love ballad that does not lose its slow quality even when Nils Frykdahl intervenes with percussion. The fact that the band thanks Soeur Sourire is far from surprising given the topic, but "Girl That Said Goodbye" stands as the most accessible of all the pieces on "Mother Twilight". "Washington State", however, is a rude shock with its harsh a capella sound, as is the amazing "Catch Me" with its amusing, Wiccan percussion and ghostly vocals (I first heard the song with a video reminding me of Lolly Willowes). Closer "Live Old" returns to a simple, quiet folk sound like little else on the record - perhaps a soothing finale.

All in all, "Mother Twilight" must stand as one of the most badly overlooked albums of the early 2000s. At a time when the direction of music was unclear, Dawn McCarthy showed where music could have a future for the decade ahead like few others.