Faun Fables - Counterclockwise [2LP]

Format: 2LP
Catalogue No.: DC945
Barcode: 0781484094517
Release Date: 30 May 2025
Genre: Folk/Americana

 Faun Fables, the long-running collaboration between Dawn McCarthy and Nils Frykdahl, have returned with ‘Counterclockwise’, the follow-up to 2016’s ‘Born of the Sun’. With the longest space between albums in the band’s twenty-seven-year history, the nature of time
and experience spent raising a family and negotiating life’s changes have much to do with the incredible listening companion Faun Fables have gifted us here.
 ‘Counterclockwise’’s songs and production are the most encompassing, richly lived-in sonic world of their seven full-length albums. From start to finish, it is an exquisitely etched portrait of their aesthetic and worldview: colourfully studded with fine-hewed jewels of song, tinged with the traditional sounds of past and future nations.
 Their timeless ‘songtelling’ practice is entwined with a holistic view of a life in music - embracing and celebrating the mundane details of home, partnering and family, elevated by a mystical and fantastical perspective. The new discovery here is their creative relationship with time. As Dawn notes in the album liner: “Time… the most fertile & playful of mediums, though full of mist... We mustn’t forget time offers itself first as something to be creatively shaped.”
 ‘Counterclockwise’ is the first Faun Fables album engineered and produced by Dawn and Nils from start to finish. Taking the wheel in the tradition of the engineers that taught them, they have created a living atmosphere of songs and family. The chiming and twinkling of bells throughout evokes the richness of the years and the passage of time. Highlighting the spirit of play, Nils brings his multi-instrumental vision (as heard in Sleepytime Gorilla Museum and Free Salamander Exhibit), contributing on guitar, bass, flutes, voice, glockenspiel, drums, harmonium, trombone and tenor sax.
 Dawn and Nils’ wide-ranging vocal harmony tradition is enriched by the voices of their daughters Edda, Ura and Gurdrin, who contribute on keyboards and percussion as well. Norwegian guitarist Arild Hammerø lends his singular guitar craft on the songs ‘Ember Bell’, ‘Hiawatha’, ‘Wonderous Stories’ (on which he also sings) and ‘Maybe’, as well as the final, essential sounds that close the album.
 Dedicated with love to Dawn’s late father, Edward ‘Will’ McCarthy, ‘Counterclockwise’ is an evocation of the essential truth and joy of Faun Fables’ relationship with time, the greatest value they can imagine to give to anyone who listens to their music.

Tracklisting
The Wedding
Ember Bell
Washing Song
Widdershins
Black Diamond
Elfrida
Fearful Name
Black Angels (Czarne  Anioły)
Woolsey Street & the Lake  of Fire
Sugar Camp
Lullaby
Hiawatha
Wonderous Stories
Maybe
Joy of Counterclockwise
Celestial Bell