Customer Reviews

Transit Rider

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Five stars simply is not enough for this wonderful record. I had the great pleasure of seeing Faun Fables open for Rasputina here in Florida year before last when they performed at least two of the songs from this album. Their version of "The House Carpenter" puts a new spin on one of my favorite traditional folk songs."Taki Pejzaz" is another great song from Zygmunt Konieczny who's "Carousel With Madonnas" was on "Family Album".
"The Corwith Brothers" is great piece in the classic musical theatre vein.It would be tough to find a weak song on record.If you get the chance to see Faun Fables perform the "The Transit Rider" live,run (don't walk) to the box office for tickets.Faun Fables are spectacular live and this record is really something special.

Although they are seldom recognised for it, Faun Fables can claims with some justification to have been the group that invented modern "freak folk" with their 2001 masterpiece Mother Twilight. On that album, they combined eccentric instrumentation (if not so unique as contemporaries Spires That in the Sunset Rise were to become), dramatic vocals, and lyrics that ranged from personal nightmares to religious.

It is unfortunate that on their 2006 soundtrack "The Transit Rider", Dawn McCarthy does not succeed in recapturing the brilliance of "Mother Twilight" or the stark, intense beauty of 1999's Early Song. In contrast to the fierce passion and mystery of such a song as "Catch Me" or "Mother Twilight", most of "Transit Rider" is really rather lacking in emotion and tends towards performance art. Often Dawn McCarthy shares vocal with collaborator Nils Frykdahl as if they were playing an opera - and though I have come to appreciate music classical music in modern times opera is something that still troubles me with its pomposity. On such pieces as "Corwith Brothers" and even worse on "In Speed", Frykdahl takes on the worst aspects of opera singing and takes away all the beauty and mystery that made earlier Faun Fables albums so wonderful. The way Frykdahl sings "let's speed up" is nothing like the basic message one would expect from a singer like McCarthy: such music as this is meant to counter the speedy urban lifestyle and trying to conform to it is totally destructive. The misplacement of the vocals also takes quite a bit away from such a song as "Fire and Castration" that remains much closer to the stark power of their first two albums. Even the epic "Taki Pejazz" is not moving in the way "Mother Twilight" was. "Questioning", is an embarrassing attempt at funk.

There are still some moments that recall and even expand on what Faun Fables did on earlier albums, most especially the interpretation of the traditional folk song "House Carpenter", which at least equals what Buffy Sainte-Marie did with that song forty years beforehand, and the slow, dreamy, yet strange "Earth"s Kiss", "Dream on a Train" "I'd Like to Be". If Faun Fables wanted to do something about a soundtrack to a film about life on a transit system, they could have certainly done with more material like "Dream on a Train".

All in all, though I bought this before "Mother Twilight" and "Early Song", I would not recommend you do the same. You will miss too much of a great singer and songwriter.

Saw a favorable review in Mojo Magazine and took a chance after hearing some samples on Amazon...Expected the rebirth of the Incredible String band but this is not even close...A lot of senseless screeching and howling set to minimalist instrumentation that could best be described as nature's version of a garage band...Really tedious listening and by the time the record is half over you are thinking, can there actually be more??? Keep in mind that I think the Incredible String band is probably the most innovative band to ever pick up instruments...That being said, even they had some nerve racking moments, most memorable to these ears was on Hangman's Beautiful daughter....Nothing there could compare to the lows encountered on this record...In some cases, it is almost completely devoid of structure or melody...Very disappointing.....

This is a very intense album but the music almost gets strangled in words but what can I say some of os want more music some of us want more words, it's a great album even though it's not my favorite I'm pretty sure that I'll buy all af the albums. Love the intensity.