Megafaun Heretofore

Other than their talent in writing catchy or meaningful songs and their subsequent emotional impact on your psyche, there’s usually one thing, an x-factor or a gimmick, about a band that catches your interest and becomes the focus point of your love and admiration.  For members of the KISS Army, it might be the makeup, the mythos, or Gene Simmons' seven-inch tongue.  For Sonic Youth disciples, waves of distortion and feedback may be sweeter than their mother’s voice.  But when a band changes or modifies that certain panache, you start to question your relationship with the band.  Such is my predicament with Megafaun’s Heretofore EP.  

It’d be impossible to say that the entire effort is unlikable because the band’s exploring the landscape of Southern music; in fact, some of the changes should actually be welcomed improvements.  Volunteers, in particular, is a wonderful example of what the band does best: quirky Appalachian-infused rock that is tight and succinct while still making time and space for roaming and experimentation.  It lacks some of the punch of previous tracks like Columns, but its subdued, gentle pace fits perfectly with the impeccable harmonies of the trio.  Carolina Days also sees the band make a more straight-forward pop song, stripped of a lot of the free-form instrumentation they’re known for, but still with a countrified vibe.  The problem, however, with a lot of the expansion the boys are undertaking is that it’s a huge signpost of the band treading toward the wrong direction.

The perpetrator has to be the effort’s crowning jewel, the 12-plus-minute Comprovisation For Connor Pass. This time, though, length has nothing to with the weakness of the song.  Instead, even if it were a clean four minutes, this little number would still be nothing more than a heaping helping of mish-mashed sounds.  Like crazy jazz that’s embarked on this open-ended musical voyage mixed with lots of odd noises and plenty of half-hearted flourishes, it’s a sonic mess that’s stripped of the quaint, down-home quality and always-golden vocals the band are known for.  It crosses the line from a song from a group who lovingly and playfully mine countless influences to life as a hazardous wasteland of unfulfilled concepts.  As bad enough as it may be, it’d be fine if it were an isolated event.  Rather, it takes Bonnie’s Song, the band’s most understated track that comes and goes with such brilliance, and stifles the life right out of it, wearing down any chance for a great moment to occur.  

If anything, for an EP, there’s a lot going on.  But that’s the thing with these releases; they’re small samples of what’s to come on the next full length, a means of staving off the fans’ hunger.  While the concept of exploring new horizons seems like a perpetually Megafaun thing to do,  it’s a case of too much too soon and of a band reaching for places they have no business going toward.  So, gang, as a plea for the next LP, don’t take the makeup off.  Please.