Faun Fables, the long-running collaboration between Dawn McCarthy and Nils Frykdahl, have returned with a new album, Counterclockwise, out May 30. The follow-up to 2016’s Born of the Sun, it marks the longest space between albums in the band’s twenty-seven year history, a living atmosphere of songs and family, enchanted by the nature of time and the experience spent growing together. The first single, “Ember Bell,” releases today with a music video by Lara Miranda.
Counterclockwise is the first Faun Fables album engineered and produced by Dawn and Nils from start to finish; the songs and production offer the most encompassing, richly lived-in sonic world of their seven full-length albums. Their timeless “songtelling” practice is entwined with a holistic view of a life in music — celebrating the mundane details of home and family, elevated by a mystical and fantastical perspective. The creative relationship with time is key to Counterclockwise; in the Faun family, the passage of time is an affirmative process evolving through old and new generations. Their time in the world is viewed as one of eternal return, of shared experience living on, of becoming young and growing again. As Dawn notes in the album liner notes:
“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 began to take form in 2020, its songs brought together from over a span of fifteen years. Some came from commissioned projects about werewolves, Mother Goose and other fairy tales. Others were rooted in familial traditions: the lead single, “Ember Bell”, is a meditation on the organic complexities of motherhood and pregnancy where Dawn sings of “the dark tinderbox inside of me”. Several cover songs salute crucial companions like Yes and the Bee Gees, as well as the theme song to 70s television program Grizzly Adams. Dawn and Nils’ wide-ranging vocal harmony tradition is enriched by the voices of their daughters — Edda, Ura and Gudrin — who contribute on keyboards and percussion to Counterclockwise as well. Across sixteen tracks, 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, while Norwegian guitarist Arild Hammerø lends his singular guitar craft on “Ember Bell” and several other tracks.
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. Counterclockwise arrives May 30, 2025.
