Rating: * * * *
According to local three-piece Teacups, the world should run on magic. And if it was up to the clap and strum ladies, that would involve running barefoot through soft foliage in dappled light.
The album is aptly titled because you actually do feel like you are meandering through a fictional forest of brightly striped vines, pausing to admire a giant toadstool caught in a sunbeam. And at other times it evokes a lonely, but not unpleasant, journey in a rickety old dinghy.
Auckland-based Teacups started on the streets, or so the story goes. Elizabeth and Chelsea would sing for their supper, competing for customers with a henna tattoo stand. Eventually Talita joined, with her double bass, and whipped the pair into shape. The trio opened for Jose Gonzalez when he toured here in January 2009.
Sweet stories trill through this album, accompanied by a complex assembly of percussion and that double bass. The first five one-word titled songs on the album soar like the birds, skylarks and hornets they are about.
The mood deepens in the second half with Wave At Me From Across The Sea - picture a lonely girl strumming at the foot of her bed, remembering a boy. It may be sombre but it's still charming. Another hidden gem is Mon Petit Poisson Avec Beats sung in French.
Forest Fiction is rustic, but it is by no means rough. The songs are quirky, catchy and impossible to re-enact.
