Faun Fables

At first blush, Dawn McCarthy seems to have been born into the wrong time. After all, the music she makes as the main force behind Faun Fables, supported at this gig by the Legendary River Drifters, draws heavily from the English folk tradition of centuries past, and the instrumentation she favors tends toward the ancient and the arcane, not the cutting-edge and forward-looking. But a close listen to A Table Forgotten, a new EP made for the Drag City imprint, reveals the modernist touches she brings to her venerable influences. "A Winter Sleep," which concludes the recording, illustrates this point: McCarthy's ethereal vocalizing, which recalls gothic music of previous epochs, not the age of black lipstick, is underpinned by a thudding, rock-inflected arrangement that pits doom-drenched violining against edgy electric guitar. The eccentric combination works due to the juxtaposition of disparate styles, not in spite of it. As a result, McCarthy's timing couldn't be better.