REVIEW: Magafaun – Megafaun (Crammed Discs)
In 2006 North Carolina’s DEYARMOND EDISON split and from that band’s ashes rose up three much better bands, two of which have already found critical and commercial success, those being BON IVER and GAYNGS respectively. The third band consists of three of the members from GAYNGS and I hold their new album in my rather excitable hands. I mean who doesn’t like BON IVER and the debut GAYNGS was a real slow burner for me but one that now I listen to a hell of a lot. MEGAFAUN have a high pedigree to live up to and I have to admit they do a pretty good job of it. This band is an altogether different beast than GAYNGS, the only similarity I feel is the “needs repeated listens” quality of this disc.The flow of the album is scatty at best, there are moments such as These Words which although inventive and great fun, only the vocal harmony’s link it to the rest of the record. But it’s on the instrumental Isadora where I feel the group try and play it too quirky. The horns seem to poke fun at the grandeur of other subtler moments on here. Hope You Know is a deathly quiet, affecting a sombre mood like Canada’s KEPLER (who split when they lost Jeremy Gara to ARCADE FIRE) at their most tragic. The gentle western movie score flavourings of Postscript also jar against Isadora which in itself is a great track; it just has no place on the album. Proof positive of this is opener Real Slow. The clue is in the title. It’s a catchy number yet the pace is restrained. The line “make a wrong turn and you end up on a dead end road” could be a sound bite for the band itself. When the music takes a freaky psyche rock turn it blends nicely, I just wish they would drop the brass, maybe I simply have a thing against horns. Even when they affect a few seconds of the ending of a song like You Are The Light I see it as nothing except a scourge on an otherwise classic tune.
As Everything plays the record out It becomes clear that on this, the band’s fourth album that they need a tighter focus on what they are trying to achieve. There is a feeling that MEGAFAUN is a project rather than a fully-fledged band. Yet when I listen to the heart-warming Know You Know it’s obvious that this band have the potential to bury the likes of GAYNGS and BON IVER, the song writing can be utterly majestic but for now when listening to band there is a sense that MEGAFAUN is simply an outlet for GAYNGS songs that do not fit in. MEGAFAUN deserves more.
I originally wrote this review for pennyblackmusic
Advertisement
