Faun Fables - Transit Rider '2006

Tracks list

Given their back catalog, Faun Fables have created a singular musical universe,
one that is evocative of other times, places, and eras. Transit Rider takes that
enigmatic aesthetic to a new extreme -- that last word cannot be overstated.
Transit Rider is a truly obsessive song cycle and story that Dawn McCarthy
developed for theater and performed in 2002, and has been resuscitated. She and
Nils Frykdahl (the core of Faun Fables) have developed a traveling work that
features four players, films and music from the band, and from other sources.
This is an eerie work that draws on ages-old Anglo and Eastern European folk
traditions, vanguard rock, the cabaret works of Kurt Weill, and the humor of
Erik Satie. "Transit Theme" opens the 13-cut production as McCarthy sings, "I am
a transit rider goings and comings at all hours, in the light and in the dark,
wait for my train but don't have to park. I am a transit rider, goings and
comings they're all the same..." She's accompanied by Frykdahl's guitar and
backing vocals, her auto harp, percussion, and bass, and the strange sound of
trumpets and violins that float and hover, denoting history, tradition, and
their disappearances, as everything continues forward without purpose, without
destination. Motion, space, time, dissolution, experience, and the edge of
sanity are explored as the ebb and flow of continuance without cessation evolves
and returns in a broken circle. The cover songs, "House Carpenter" for instance,
is a traditional song that has many versions in which Jesus waits and celebrates
the return of his lover Pan! On "In Speed," Frykdahl and McCarthy share vocals
for different parts of a truly manic journey through fear that results in
isolation and detachment, and sprinting away from anything that touches the
transit rider beyond the quick witness of everything going by in a blur, the
refrain "Let's speed up, without grace and running" with voices, howling,
moaning, shouting, and operatically singing as the track goes off the rail and
becomes unhinged with its nearly orchestral instrumentation. The set's longest
tune immediately follows; "Taki Pejzaz (Such a Landscape)" was written in 1963
by the Polish songwriter Zygmunt Conieczny, from a poem by Antoni Szmidt and
translated by McCarthy and Agnieszka Sowinski. Its haunting folk forms sweep
through observations of the landscape as something to be seen, not felt, as the
"tangling pine trees...stand mute and useless." The vanguard rock & roll burns
itself into folk tradition with crashing tom toms, electric guitars, flutes, and
more. McCarthy's nearly unbearable otherworldly alto voice chanting, wailing,
and finally moving to contralto, is transformed but unaware. So is the transit
rider, a virtual encyclopedia of seeing without knowing. One could argue the
concept is overly done by the cycle's nadir, but that would be missing the
point. The transit rider, who continually furthers the journey without getting
anywhere, grows old without experiences. The music and the voices provide the
darker and humorous side of such a life. In the final song, "I'd Like to Be,"
McCarthy and Frykdahl whimsically engage fantasy: "I'd like to be/like the
wind/singing around...like the wind/and touch everything...." But it's flesh and
blood moving through these thoughts without resembling them. Simple acoustic
six- and twelve-string guitars sing this song, written by Souer Sourire, also
from 1963. The transit rider finishes the journey where she started, admiring,
escaping into thought, and ultimately seeking no destination but the spirit of
motion itself. This one will test Faun Fables fans, but it is utterly wonderful,
engaging, disturbing, and funny; it merely needs to be heard on its own terms.
This is not so much freak- or acid-folk, as it is modern music, evolved from
rock, folk and pop, composed and transformed into something all of its own
creation.

Tracklist:
1.01 - Faun Fables - Birth (2:10) 
1.02 - Faun Fables - Transit Theme (4:47) 
1.03 - Faun Fables - House Carpenter (5:05) 
1.04 - Faun Fables - In Speed (3:52) 
1.05 - Faun Fables - Taki Pejaz (8:13) 
1.06 - Faun Fables - Roadkill (4:32) 
1.07 - Faun Fables - Earth's Kiss (5:06) 
1.08 - Faun Fables - Fire & Castration (4:52) 
1.09 - Faun Fables - The Questioning (2:01) 
1.10 - Faun Fables - I No Longer Wish To (1:14) 
1.11 - Faun Fables - The Corwith Brothers (3:19) 
1.12 - Faun Fables - Dream On A Train (6:51) 
1.13 - Faun Fables - I'd Like To Be (4:12)

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