Darkest Before Dawn

Fern Knight finds their way — but they're not out of the woods yet.

by A.D. Amorosi

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Published: May 13, 2008

folk/pop

Alissa Anderson (CLICK IMAGE FOR LARGER VERSION)

Several weeks ago Fern Knight — the least acidic sibling in Philly's acid folk family — played a stripped-down show at Tin Angel.

Not having violinist James Wolf onboard that night was like having one onion skin-thin layer peeled away. As the spookily precious sound of "Silver Fox" unfolded, the absence of Wolf's quietly menacing swirl drew the ear to the cautious sensuality of Margie Wienk's voice.

"Once across the lake we'll find an empire of our own/ we can make a garden where we'll finally be alone," she sang. Yet as "Silver Fox" continued, Wienk's crystalline tones found the song's sword of Damocles. Suddenly it was all fields of darkness and chains encircling the lovers' throats. "We can't survive out here amidst the winter's storm," goes the finale.

So much for flowers and romance.

It's that haunted mix of gray fatalism and lush fruitfulness — of chamber classicism and gritty Anglo folksiness — that marks Fern Knight, Wienk's third CD with harpist/bassist Jesse Sparhawk and husband/percussionist/guitarist Jim Ayre.

"There's something to be said about why it's a self-titled album," says Wienk before leaving for the band's first tour of the West Coast.

"I feel like for the first time I have come into my own and the band's come into its own. That's not to say that the singer/songwriter/cellist is disavowing their first two efforts — the far moodier Seven Years of Severed Limbs and Music for Witches and Alchemists.

"I was just a little uncomfortable in my role as producer for those records."

With Fern Knight Wienk knew exactly how she wanted every melody and string arrangement to ring out. The core quartet contributed more to the overall aesthetic than they had previously. There are fewer overdubs so it sounds like the band's live blend of earth, air, angelics and evils. "Plus Hexham Head's analog sound, Brian McTear's mixing skills, Greg Weeks and the Fat City mastering was the winning combo-meal for a great-sounding record." Weeks is Wienk's recording engineer for Fern Knight, her partner in their Valerie Project side-band and of course, the main man of Philly's Espers.

"GW is totally my bro and a good friend, and musically we think in parallel ways," says Wienk.

Yet while there's a hint of Philadelphia in everything Wienk does now (that includes the interaction between herself and Gillian Chadwick for a clothing line, Woodland Bop, and their witchy ensemble Ex-Reverie) neither her music nor Fern Knight started here.

Wienk's family moved from Wisconsin to Ithaca, NY, when she was eight. With musicians into roots and reggae in upstate New York she started a goth band with a sampler and a drum machine. "I guess I wanted to be contrary." That's where disconnects in her music started. When she began eking out folk songs with a psychedelic edge while living in Providence in the '90s, Wienk didn't want to be branded a singer-songwriter. "I didn't even have a band yet let alone an idea of what I'd be," she laughs. What she became was what a friend suggested — the name of a great aunt in that pal's family, Fern Knight. For all her family's moves and travels, it was one trip that inspired her — Ireland, 2006.

"I visited for six weeks with Jim right before we moved to Philadelphia together," says Wienk who notes that the inspiration for much of Fern Knight comes from that moment in time. "It really was an otherworldly place and influenced me profoundly," she says. "That helped shape the arc of the new album, especially since lots of songs of this album were based on our experiences there."

There's a streak of blue sky that exists on Fern Knight not found on their previous efforts. "Loch Na Fooey" and "Bemused" are about oceans and lambs. Lambs! The narrative verse form tells a good sweet story in "Synge's Chair."

"I wanted songs to be less dark with fewer minor chords and more major ones, less oblique lyrics and more direct narrative verses... I think musically a bright ray of sunshine comes through."

But there's the uneasily quavering watery effects on her voice and the way the feedback winds its way through everything from "Bemused" to the distant tentative howls of "The Magpie Suite: Prelude, Part II, Part III." The latter may start as a song cycle written as an ode to all things green and living. But even the songs that act as exaltations of beauty show that nothing good lasts. "They were contrasted by the pending environmental destruction we see here at home and the suite itself explores the slow erosion of our earth and a descent into self-inflicted destruction and what direction we as a species might take in the end."

Wienk then stops talking as if she suddenly realizes all the good and the bad, all the gold and the black, of Fern Knight at once. "Juxtaposed next to songs about an impending apocalypse, I guess then the scary songs are darker than ever. Oh well."

(a_amorosi@citypaper.net)

Sun., May 18, 8 p.m., $10 ($8 for members), International House, 3701 Chestnut St., 215-387-5125, ihousephilly.org

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