Megafaun

Seek out this album if you enjoy good-natured and progressive roots music. [Oct 2011, p.105]

Yet aside from that one cut, Megafaun's self-titled album seamlessly integrates an easy-going tuneful-ness with a nearly mystical devotion to tone and texture.

For their third studio album...Megafaun dial back the more progressive elements of their sound in favor of a languid, Laurel Canyon-inspired foundation that treads the middle ground between Blitzen Trapper's experimental, neo-Southern rock romancing, and Will Oldham's post-Palace Music infatuation with American Beauty-era Grateful Dead.

It's apparent they're looking to construct a big tent for everyone to fit in, and unsurprisingly they're succeeding wildly.

Megafaun shines the brightest on thematic tracks like "Scorned," in which you can practically feel the dust clouds after each harmonica blast and the heat shimmering in the vibrating background guitars.

As giant a leap on from the lo-fi oddness of 2009's Gather, Form & Fly as it was possible to make. [Oct 2011, p.124]

While there is some noodling with electronica, it's the understated melodies that linger. [Oct 2011, p.93]

Throughout Megafaun, the balance between expectation and surprise is maintained neatly.

Sequenced like an upside-down bell curve, the band's fetching fourth album opens with the vintage hippie wisdom, musique concrète, extended space rock, and lush, jazzy Americana of "Isadora."

The cause is this beautiful, intricate album. It's no mere intellectual exercise, because as compelling as these ideas are, they are overshadowed all the way through by the deep feeling and sense of discovery in these songs.

Though they challenge genre convention with their choices of instruments and ambitious arrangements, Megafaun have made careful, spot-on assessments of what actually works within the framework of traditional roots music.

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.

It requires an open mind to absorb so much in one single LP, but whether you're looking for sing-along choruses, meandering instrumentals or just a damn-good listen, all three boxes will surely be inked by big fat ticks by the time the disc stops spinning.

Every song has a beautiful sheen, with washy acoustic guitars bathing the listener in stained-glass glow.