Faun Fables - The Transit Rider

Drag City
Released: 05.16.06

Dawn McCarthy created The Transit Rider, an ambitious theatrical production of an original song cycle, from her experiences on the New York subway system in the 1990s. The physical stage is set to resemble a light-rail train, with a row of chairs along a wall and images created by visual artist Eric S. Koziel appearing out of framed window space. As each actor reaches their “stop,” they perform a song into a microphone located in front of the train door and then exit the stage. The story is an arcane, fantastical journey in which McCarthy often interacts with a chilling train conductor and is unsure of how or where to find her stop.

Early on, the accompanying album works, with McCarthy leading us through a plot introduction in “Transit Theme,” followed by easily one of the finest versions of “House Carpenter” ever recorded. Here her voice floats over our heads and her thespian presence redefines one of our finest traditional songs. However, after the first three tracks, starting with “In Speed,” the vocal contributions of second Fable, Nils Frykdahl, become more prominent. This is a disaster. His habitation here is the equivalent of eating ten Twinkies in one sitting. It’s too much of a bad thing. All the fluff is then exposed, including a mildly funky schlock catastrophe (“The Questioning) and a couple boring folk prances (“Roadkill,” “Earth’s Kiss”).

In its most interesting form, The Transit Rider is to be seen as well as heard. Unfortunately though, theatricality tends to exasperate when not provided with all your senses (sight in this case). So rather than having a peculiar, yet cohesive performance art piece, we are given a rather lengthy and exposed mistake. Even as McCarthy begins to smuggle her extraordinary voice into our progressive sensors, it is again displaced out by the presence of Frykdahl’s operatic rankness.

As a performance, The Transit Rider has received remarkable praise, with one personal friend even calling it, “the most direct and sensational piece of art I can ever remember seeing.” Well, The Transit Rider may indeed be a brilliant or at least engrossing production, but as a record it begins to spoil and the whole encouraging and exciting concept of it eventually shits itself.

- Kent Thompson