Faun Fables Trips Out The Triple Door
Last Monday, Oakland band Faun Fables was a doublebill with local, hyper-experimental whozits, the Degenerate Art Ensemble. We don't know who does the booking for the Triple Door, but we applaud them for the amazing variety of the shows they present. As a case in point, this Saturday is Eurofever: A Tribute to ABBA and the Bee Gees, while Sunday offers the Roosevelt High Jazz Ensembles. That's keeping the mix fresh.
We can't give you a capsule review of DAE because we never really got what they were up to. At least this evening, the element that would make their show click for us was missing. Singer Haruko Nishimura was costumed like a Japanese nature sprite with white platform boots, but based on her singing style, she could be Nina Hagen's goddaughter. The song selection was punkish, cabaret-y, balladesque, Chinese operatic. DAE can be larger, but currently Nishimura is backed by five musician/vocalists who play a mixture of instruments, some invented. We feel comfortable saying that either you enjoy staccato scream-singing, or you don't. And "Can't Wait To Masturbate," which closed their set, frightened us.
Then Faun Fables arrived, a four-member group (up from two, founders Dawn McCarthy and Nils Frykdahl), and began setting up a little screen backdrop that made us think they were going to use a little rear-projection (*yawn*). We were totally unprepared for their Waits/Zappa/Lloyd Webber extravaganza that followed: the song cycle The Transit Rider. We left bubbling over with praise, some of which appears after the jump. (On a sidenote, we understand the CD features the songs only, not the spoken dialogue of the theater piece.)
Written mostly by Dawn and Nils, The Transit Rider also features:
...collaborations with Dawn's mother Michelina Tyrie ('Earths Kiss') and a poem by her dad Will McCarthy ('I No Longer Wish To') written during his last days as a stock broker. This Transit Rider also incorporates into its setting songs from Zygmunt Konieczny (Taki Pejzaz/Such a Landscape), Soeur Sourire (Je Voudrais/I'd like to Be), and the Anglo Saxon traditional 'House Carpenter.'
Performed with the help of Jenya Chernoff and Matt Lebofsky (as the cleaning lady and phone guy, respectively), The Transit Rider opens with a young woman (McCarthy) on a train, hoping she's heading to a picnic and not sure where her stop is. She's instructed in proper train etiquette by an officious conductor (Frykdahl), who's not terribly helpful about finding her picnic stop, and befriended by a trollish, gnomic passenger (also Frykdahl, but with a sonically enhanced creaky back) who may be a guide to the wilderness outside.
McCarthy's voice is...well if you like either CocoRosie or Marlene Dietrich, you'll be right at home. Frykdahl can switch effortlessly from a space-filling, musical theater hero's boom to a rasping growl. The songs can be folk, heavy metal-tinged, anthemic, or soft ballads. Their version of "House Carpenter" -- both in singing and in choreography -- was the best we've ever heard or seen. Along the way, the characters explore the metaphor of transit, being on the go, the world flashing past, all in startlingly funny interactions and asides. One or two of the songs felt shoehorned into the concept, but all in all, the cycle works as a piece. We emerged instant Faun Fables fans.
