Send "Megafaun " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Pitchfork |
 "Plant that flag on solid ground," advise the members of Megafaun on their second album, Gather, Form & Fly. The trio-- comprised of brothers Brad and Phil Cook and Joe Westerlund-- sing that admonition repeatedly, in boisterous unison, yet they have no intention of taking such advice, at least not musically. In fact, since the disbanding of their previous band DeYarmond Edison (with Bon Iver's Justin Vernon), they have celebrated the joys of shaky foundations, creating ingeniously ramshackle folk rock that combines acoustic instruments and mountain harmonies with obtuse sound collages, meandering song structures, and abstract passages featuring the most psychedelic banjo imaginable. As if to illustrate this point, they've even designed the album cover so that it works either as a square or as a diamond, the subtle shift of landscape revealing new ambiguities."Solid Ground" kicks off with a dirty guitar riff and a walking bass line, unfolding as a formally repetitive blues. This type of structure-- the same line three times, followed by a new fourth line-- is perhaps the most solid ground in rock, yet Megafaun make it slippery by adding a squealing solo whose feedback emanates not from a guitar, but from a closely mic'ed blues harmonica. Near the end, the casual midtempo groove threatens to fall apart as the instruments break stride, but Megafaun manage to keep it together. Averse to predictability and sentimentality, the band is restless with established forms, yet instead of subverting blues and folk traditions, they upend them. Their ends are deconstructive, not destructive....full text |
| Rollogrady |
| With its blend of folk, country, jazz, Appalachian mountain music and the kitchen sink, at first blush, it’s impossible to pigeonhole Megafaun. Americana might come closest, but I’m not sure the genre has been named that adequately captures the full extent of their capabilities. On their new album, Gather, Form & Fly, though the sounds range from avant-garde space freak-outs to juke joint blues, the boys do create a distinct noise that perfectly suits a back porch jam session. Comprised of the members of “that band Bon Iver used to be in,” Joe Westerlund and brothers Brad and Phil Cook prove that they have nothing to prove at all and are doing just fine own their own. The North Carolina trio have an atmosphere all their own, and a pretty damn engaging one, at that....full text |
| Tinymixtapes |
| Over the past few years, the climate has become such that hippies can safely come out of the closet and walk among the indie-types. With the rising popularity of bands that sound more and more like they sat in the woods, smoked, and studied The Bands’ Stage Fright and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young’s Déjà Vu rather than putting on dumb masks and cranking The Knife’s Silent Shout, there is enough social capital spinning around that an extended “Cosmic Charlie” jam can be enjoyed without the fear of losing that so desperately worked-for cool. But the rest of us don’t give a fuck about any of this new-fangled security, because we’ve always proudly walked the world holding The Grateful Dead’s Workingman’s Dead and Black Flag’s Damaged tightly in our arms, unable to see why any sharp distinction from the categorizers-in-power should determine the sounds we love and fight to. So the walls have been torn down, thus allowing a space for the indie-normalization process of this previously excluded hippie-sounding aesthetic. However, even if this troubling process had not ensued — even if there weren’t indies running all over various Yankee cities wearing flannel shirts despite the heat of summer and, with a fake southern accent, singing about red squirrels — Megafaun’s new album would still be as solid as it is. The pop-complexity and improvised-playfulness of 2008’s Bury The Square has carried over in a much richer form on Gather, Form & Fly. The band also captures and expresses their Southern roots to a greater extent on the new album, opening up with tranquil fingerpicking, piano, and fiddle on “Bella Marie,” setting the stage perfectly for the transition into the banjo-led “Kauffman’s Ballad.” Unlike most of the other bands who have recently pursued similar musical themes, Megafaun sound more like they are engaging historical forms because it is what they have known and lived rather than for the sake of hip appropriation. While conversations about authenticity are always as pretentious as they are vacuous, there is at least some distinction that can be plausibly made between being and seeming....full text |
Megafaun lyrics
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