Megafaun you might call casual. "Had a blown-out day off listening to demos and new music with brother Yan," reads a months-old dispatch on their website. "Then we watched Pineapple Express and Knocked Up back to back. Then I fell asleep for 9 hours and awoke to Marty’s famous pasta breakfast." In a roundabout way, that sums up the North Carolinian trio pretty well: attempting the familiar, arriving at the unexpected. Though their latest LP, the sanguine, self-titled Megafaun, dials back on the clawhammer outbursts and and out-from-nowhere harmonic blasts that peppered their earlier work, they're still reliably surprising, their sleepily shapeshifting folk-rock quietly but confidently winding its way through the annals of American music.
That the sinewy Zappa-esque whirlaway of "Isadora" and the twinkly Horsnby-esque exhalation "Hope You Know" (very nearly the Bruce nod their former DeYarmond Edison bandmate Bon Iver's "Beth/Rest" was) sit comfortably next to each other on Megafaun should tell you a lot about just how expansive their outlook is these days. Outliers abound, but they downplay the rustic instrumentation of their earlier LPs for a more traditional, country-rock setup. The overarching sound's got more than a little bit in common with the Grateful Dead's more pastoral moments, all manners of harmony-kissed American beauty that never quite land where you thought they might. From the patiently unfurling opener "Real Slow" to rousing gospel closer "Everything", Megafaun trudge over a terrific amount of sonic ground here without restlessness.
This serene, settled-in sound mostly feels like a trade-up; they manage a consistency of tone and texture here they've never shown before. As singers, alone and apart, they've never sounded better, and the record's subtler, less showy instrumentation and more reeled-in compositions suggest a newfound maturity that they wear exceptionally well. Hints of Southern smoke, Laurel Canyon folk, and hippie-country still inform their sound, but in their easygoing way, it never feels as if you're being led through a tour of the touchstones; the band's drowsy melodies and taut songcraft keep individual moments arresting, while their knack for slippery sonic detail (guitar twinkle, field recordings, the occasional banjo), the record's languid pacing, and its surplus of strange, striking melodies holds its hour-long expanse together.
That generous runtime does prove to be Megafaun's only real downside; save "Everything", Megafaun's standout moments seem to come in its first half, excising Delta moaner "Scorned" and a few of the wispier, late-LP country-rockers probably would've further boosted cohesion. Minor complaints, really; here, Megafaun have quietly completed the smart, sizable stylistic shift they started on last fall's Heretofore EP, drawing back on the burly backwoods weirdness of their earlier work while widening their stylistic scope and pushing compositional delicacy to the forefront. And Megafaun may be their most immediately ingratiating, rewarding LP yet, as well-suited for a night strapped into headphones as it is a lazy Sunday morning, dancing around the bedroom, munching casually on a pasta breakfast.
