Faun Fables: A Table Forgotten
By Team JamBase Jul 26, 2008 • 5:10 am PDT

Be, ye, warned: this is not the feel-good hit of the summer. For this, ye shall be glad. Dawn McCarthy has, with longtime collaborator Nils Frykdahl (Sleepytime Gorilla Museum), been terrifying audiences for the last decade, and the band’s latest EP is no exception. Now a quartet with Meredith Yayanos (violin, voice, theramin) and Kirana Peyton (harmonium, voice, bass), what was once a haunting, quasi-pagan maypole jig is now a fractured, gothic, house of ill repute. Based on a concept McCarthy began developing in theatrical avenues while artist-in-residence at Southern California’s Idyllwild Art Academy, these four tracks explore the tools, toil and spirit of the kitchen. Built for the stage, McCarthy’s voice is, indeed, a physical entity – almost elemental in its range and volatility. Nestled in a basket of guitar, strings and kitchen-percussion, her melodies stretch and quaver before resolving as often to the tritone as to the harmonic center. Invoking dusty glass, whistling teapots, spilled crumbs and moaning wind, her lyrics capture a sepia-toned image of agrarian whimsy where chipping paint and rusty metal are as transcendent as they are desultory. Calling to mind the stop motion oddity of Jan Svankmeyer and contextual ambiguity of Matthew Barney, the album seduces like a music box before inducing a stream of images that, upon the listener’s awakening, may or may not have composed a nightmare.
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