As a middle-aged music critic, covering a field rife with middle-aged (or older) rockers, I suppose I can be excused for sometimes forgetting that rock ‘n’ roll was originally the music of the young—a genre that proved uniquely suited to expressing the alienation and angst of the generation that came of age at the last midcentury, and which inspired those that followed to take it to even greater Dionysian heights. Now decades-old tunes of rebellion and defiance are employed to sell hatchbacks and pet shampoo, and it takes something like the new EP by the Chicago duo Fawn to remind you that the genre is still very, very good at providing what originally brought it to prominence.
Listening to “Fawn”—which manages to be both fuzzy and piercing, both raw and crystalline—I felt once again buffeted by the whims of a world that resisted both recognition and interpretation; in other words, young. Though for songwriters and multi-instrumentalists Bridget Stiebris and Haley Blomquist, the response is less a matter of subversion than sedation—the sheer sensory overload of this postmillennial moment acts on them almost like a drug. The unusually diffuse opening track, “333,” has a dreamy, almost mantra-like melody, evoking a kind of moral suffocation: “And I know now that you never truly leave hell / It sits on my back, keeps me warm… When I fall asleep I want it to stay that way.”
This is followed by “Normal C,” the EP’s first single, which is much brisker and brighter (and features a really grin-inducing vocal octave leap on the bridge), but picks where the previous tune left off: “I think I’ll stay at home today / My bed’s a rock / My muscles are drained / Cause outside’s too much on my pressure plate.”
But later, there’s this epiphany:
It’s hard to have agency If I have to feel sorta bad every day I don’t need to act Or live in normalcy All the time
The next tune, the just-over-a-minute-long “4 What???” (which asks “For what / Am I on this rock?”) features an absolutely killer dual guitar line that manages to be both searching and scorching, and features a laugh-out-loud lyric couplet: “I’ve had enough / Death and stuff / I should just make someone feel loved / I’ve had enough / Death and stuff / I wanna watch cartoons in bed.”
The charmingly sly “Nissanweekends” is another tune about being overwhelmed and exhausted—this time by the demands of everyday life—and once again evokes the idea of just lying back and letting go: “Chain chomp myself into gear when I am free / ’Cause if I lay down the earth will open up and leave me.”
And the lyric gifts just keep on coming. In my favorite track, “Mud,” which begins beguilingly simple and grows in both vigor and ambition, there’s this wonderful line: “Flowers hiding from the sun / I will hang my head up and drag my body through the sun.” “Whiplash” begins with a guitar intro that sounds downright classical, then spirals dizzyingly into this amazing passage: “I don’t know / Where it hurts / I taste a season / A people pleaser.”
The EP’s eight tracks run just around seventeen minutes, but the tunes are complete—fully and genuinely realized—and there’s spirited singing, some blistering playing, and (to my original point) the ongoing feeling of dislocation and disconnection in a world that’s all but impervious. “Maybe when I am hurt I feel most like myself,” we’re told (in “Treat Me Nice”). Is there a voice in the rock pantheon that hasn’t said the same thing? And made us feel it too?
“Fawn” is available on OK Cool’s Bandcamp page. On June 16, OK Cool plays Schubas, 3159 North Southport.
Robert Rodi is an author, spoken-word performer and musician who has served as Newcity’s Music Editor since 2014. He’s written more than a dozen books, including the travel memoir “Seven Seasons In Siena,” and his literary and music criticism has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, Salon, The Huffington Post and many other national and regional publications. Contact: robert@newcity.com
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