Faun Fables were born in the San Francisco Bay Area in 1998, with Californian native Nils Frykdahl as main collaborator alongside life partner Dawn McCarthy as front woman.
The latter is a ”renaissance lady” who has also graced the work of Americana royalty, Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy.
Their seventh album for Drag City is a belated follow-up to 2016’s Born of the Sun and is dedicated to McCarthy’s late father.
Delicate folk songs are distorted but not ravaged by the passage of time. They are steeped in a nostalgia for things half remembered, anthems to hauntology.
In all there are sixteen chants, family odes, work songs and lullabies which include two improbable covers: The Bee Gees’s Black Diamond and Jon Anderson’s composition Wondrous Stories which was originally a Yes single from Going For The One.
The video to the Faun Fables’ own single Ember Bell confirms an affinity with nature and locates the woodlands as their natural habit. It features Norwegian guitarist Arild Hammerø on guitar
In Maybe the couple sing about a world of wonder bathed in harmony and full of rich majesty.
This fine album makes you half believe such a place could exist.
