Megafaun – Gather, Form and Fly

Someone nearby is chopping onions which is causing my tear ducts to prickle, though I suppose this might have been caused by Megafaun’s ‘The Fade’, a song which deals with the tragedy of forgetting the face of a deceased family member (the Cook brother’s Granddad in this case). As a macho Muso’s man, I’m sticking with the onions excuse.

Gather, Form and Fly is perfectly book ended by the welcoming hug of ‘Bella Marie’, a short intro of gently plucked guitar and sweet strings and ‘Tides’, a sparse, hushed lullaby goodbye. In between, Megafaun treat the listener to a tapestry of traditional Americana, centered around folk but doffing the cap to country, blues, jazz, pop and rock. It’s a rich, intriguing and diverse album where radio friendly soft rock like ‘The Fade’ sits comfortably next to the ever metamorphosing, semi instrumental, ‘Impressions of the Past’.

There is a touch of past band mate Justin Vernon in ‘Kaufman’s Ballad’, a harmony drenched, banjo backed, campfire bedtime jam but elsewhere, the Megafaun trio never step on Bon Iver’s toes and I only really mention the name in the hope of bringing extra deserved attention to this album.

The soothing, almost hypno-self-help ‘Worried Mind’ and the country duet ‘The Longest Day’ are the two most straight forward songs on the album, both hooking the listener with their warm familiarity. Elsewhere, Gather, Form and Fly offers unexpected experimentation on several tracks, most noticeably on ‘Darkest Hour’ which opens with the sound of dripping water and bongos, these drips later increasing to storm levels accompanied by a nursery rhyme round of the lyric ‘I have been wallowing inside the darkest hour’. The track finishes, after an odd gurgling breakdown, with a hugely rousing sing along which WILL make you smile. The band are clearly not always content sticking with solid forms and conventions and it’s these experimental moments which give the album as a whole a great sense of light and shade and set Megafaun apart from their contemporaries. ‘Guns’, one of the album’s strongest tracks, is a microcosm of the album as a whole, opening with an emotion soaked intro that brings to mind the best moments from The Wrens’ Meadowlands, which then morphs into an oppressive, creepy sequence of noise and effects. Lyrically, there’s a cautious optimism, as if the battle is over but the war will always be raging -

“They’ll meet us with their guns, convinced they’ve won. We’ll be the first to hum the song we learned from tired tongues.”

Gather, Form and Fly is a brilliantly written and structured album, full of depth, diversity and ambition; the kind of album that will still be revealing its subtleties after its 10th, 20th, 100th spin in your CD player.