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Faun FablesFamily Album Drag City/Inertia 'Family Album' is brimming with intoxicating folk music. Dawn the Faun's voice is mesmerising, the arrangements spectral, ritualistic. Cohort Nils Frykdahl rumbles, his voice druidic. If Dawn echoes the sounds of 60s folk gamins and white witches, Frykdahl is a heavy metal woodsman playing horrorshow acoustic music, abetted by wolves and crows. Singing a Swiss traditional, a Polish gypsy song and Brigitte Fontaine and Alain Clarier's Eternal, the duo has forged one of the terrific records of the year. Ornate guitars lay beside flute, piano, cello and more. Betwixt the chilling melodies thump scattered percussions and dirge-like bass. It is the muscular rhythm behind the music that makes it that much more striking. The urgency begins with Eyes Of A Bird; tangled guitars and heaving, moaning vocals build to an undeniably affecting apex. The singers engage each new song with a sensual versatility, harmonising like ill-fated lovers. When listened to as a whole, as this record is intended, one is transported, charmed to the point of hallucination. Amidst the darkness and haunt, there lies a swollen sense of love and camaraderie. 'Family Album' is filled with pagan carols for starlit sons and daughters of the earth. To embrace this record is to immerse oneself in the beauty of nature and the tenderness of fellowship. Balancing darkness and light, it traipses like a garden sprite.  |
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