Original and challenging debut album of experimental indie-folk.
Most likely Maddie Medley will be a new name to AUK’s esteemed audience, as it was to this reviewer. Her songwriting and captivating performances caught the eye of Elektra Records in 2018, with whom she signed on the dotted line in her early 20s. Medley’s Dave Cobb-produced EP, Coming of Age pt. 1, was just a couple of weeks away from release when the World Health Organisation declared the global COVID-19 outbreak a pandemic. Hardly ideal timing for a career launch. Around this time, Medley became disillusioned with the recording industry and took a career break, moving from Nashville to Kansas City with her partner Luke Krutzke, now also her co-producer. They are currently based in Denver, Colorado.
The release of a pair of singles (Jesus Moment and Good Clean Fun) in 2025 signalled a return to songwriting for Medley. Fawn’s Enemy, her debut album of experimental indie-folk, is both alluring and challenging. It evolved from the journey of self-discovery and recovery that was her experience of the ‘Fawn Response’—a term coined by a Californian psychoanalyst in the early 2000s to describe an alternative trauma response to the traditional fight, flight or freeze, characterised by behaviour such as people-pleasing, over-apologising and agreeableness. Medley invented a psychic safe haven, Fawn’s Forest, described by her publicist as a place where “memory, melody, rage and resilience” could coexist. She populated her enchanted otherworld with a cast that included Teardrop (a sinister antagonist, whose name is an anagram of predator), fawn characters and a pair of elderly gay skunks named Rocky and Whitney. So far, so strange.
The subject matter of the unflinching lead-off track, “★★★”, released on Bandcamp a week before the album, is both “painful and personal”. It concerns a toxic relationship which left her, but not her partner, with consequences to face. It is pretty obvious from Medley’s Bandcamp statement that she was not in favour of the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision to reverse Roe v. Wade, with all proceeds from the track being donated to the National Abortion Federation. That’s one raw and brave opening statement for a debut album, which had this reviewer cueing up Lost Woman Song from Ani DiFranco’s eponymous debut as a thematic touchpoint.
The core instruments of the Medley soundscape are guitar, upright bass, fiddle and drums/percussion, with splashes of bouzouki, mandolin, banjo, harmonica, and piano, all sympathetically showcasing her extraordinary vocal performance. The gentle lilt of Dawn, a song of self-correction, makes way for a more urgent, mantra-like affirmation of self-worth: “I’m not going to beg… I’m not coming back…”. Anger is the fuel as relationship rage penetrates both the slowcore-adjacent Can’t Even Touch Myself and the gothic folk of Maybe In Your House. Closing side A is Fawn’s Rage, in which Medley wrestles with her trauma response and resolves to be uncompromising in her words and music. It’s eerie, ethereal and idiosyncratic, with echoes of both the Sparklehorse song Spirit Ditch and the opening line of Dante’s poem The Divine Comedy (“Midway upon the journey of our life/ I found myself within a forest dark,/ For the straight-forward pathway had been lost”)
The mood is brighter on side B, which opens with the piano-driven Rocky Loves Whitney. With a sultry late-night vocal delivery and quivering string flourishes, it’s a jazzy excursion likely to be heard towards the midnight hour in the skunks’ cabin in Fawn’s Forest. Next comes Hills, which ups the overall BPM. According to Medley’s bio, this song was inspired by the Smashing Pumpkins’ Lily (My One and Only) from Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness. The languid reflections of This All Used To Be Woods hint at hidden darkness when she opines, “You couldn’t pay me to be a child again”. Medley finds redemption in the closing track, Whittle, which describes her conquest of Teardrop in Fawn’s Forest: “The fawn characters are helping me find my voice, my autonomy, and once Teardrop vanishes, I’m able to fully experience the joy of that lush inner world.”
Fawn’s Enemy sees Medley emerge from the forest with newfound confidence. Her boundary-pushing music defies genrefication: For now, file under ‘original and extraordinary’. Wherever next her muse may lead her, she certainly has the adventurous spirit, creativity, and vocal prowess to make a mark; keep your ears open.