Fable Cry – “Onion Grin” (audio) (Premiere)

The Nashville-based quintet Fable Cry identifies its music as “theatrical-scamp-rock”. Like many genre names these days, it’s a head-scratcher, to be sure, but one look at the colorful music and costuming of these musicians is more than enough to give substance to the phrase. Looking like they rolled out of an alternate version of Terry Gilliam’s The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus reimagined by Tim Burton, Fable Cry spin inventive, cabaret-ready yarns that are given life by their palpable musical energy. Such is certainly the case for “Onion Grin”, the band’s newest tune, which tells a time-worn tale from an unfamiliar angle.

Vocalist, guitarist, and accordion player Zach Ferrin goes into detail with PopMatters about “Onion Grin”: “This song was inspired by Little Red Riding Hood, and is sung from the point of view of The Big Bad Wolf as it follows his obsession with Red — the girl and the color itself. It traverses many musical changes taking you through the varied emotions of infatuation; intrigue, desperation, determination. Among the first songs written for our upcoming LP, “Onion Grin” has been apart of our live set for some time, and has thus undergone a fair amount of evolutionary change. Whether you have scamped along to this tune live, or this is your first introduction to it, I think you will enjoy what we have done to take it from the stage to the studio and now your ears at home — and everywhere else you listen!

He continues, “The song was recorded, mixed, and mastered in East Nashville by Ford Heacock at Firebreath Records. He helped capture the dark and creepy vibe that this song insisted on having, as we subtly textured it with knives, penny-picked banjos, and the deeper notes of an abandoned piano. It’s dark. Darker than we were expecting. So color us pleasantly surprised!”