Drag City (Caroline)
2006
The Transit Rider
About This Album
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.
Track List (try tracks 1,2,3,4,5,7,11 and 13)

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