The Musical Concern
Megafaun
Gather, Form & Fly
(July 21, 2009 – Hometapes)

Roots music and noisy experiments hookup in the mashup of the year!

It looks good on paper, but the result is 51 minutes of uninspired meandering.

The opening tracks are steeped in CS&N vocal dalliance, with track three, “The Fade,” proving the strongest byway of early, Wilco style, country-rock. “Impressions Of The Past” follows with a peppy piano intro that morphs into a counter-rhythm hook. The song disintegrates into noise, then crashes…only to be revived… and polished off with an earthy, glee club that laments the past through “shifting colors” and so on. Later, the glee club guides us, with field hand reverie, through more noise, and overwrought, stop-and-go business. See “Darkest Hour” and “Columns.”

On the upside, Gather, Form & Fly is whimsical.

Likely, Megafaun had a real blast making this record. (My guess is that the bong was always packed and within arm’s reach of -- if not sitting directly on -- the mixing console.) They’re sure to be a hit at music festivals, especially among the Iron & Wine crowd.

Megafaun

Hometapes

JH

Digging Up Bones

Maximo Park
Our Earthly Pleasures

(2007 – Warp Records)

Establish, embellish, stir it up, let it sit, blow it up, then quit it. In a nutshell, that’s a surefire formula for effective rock-n-roll. Add the unexpected cadence. Add the unbalanced repetition (3 or 5 “ooh, ahh baby”s, instead of 4) and the effective starts to become attractive. Now, throw in a turn of phrase, especially at the dramatic beginning of the record. You know, something like, “You’ve been/With me/A year/To the day/Three hundred/And sixty/Five days/Watching me decay.” Now you are turning the attractive into the irresistible.

More words: “The pounding rain continued its bleak fall/We decided just to write, after all.” “Ignorance isn’t bliss/Familiarity still leads to contempt.” “Are you hopeful/Or just gullible?” Smart lyrics bind the guitars and keys to the drums and bass and full-fledged production, while propelling oblique friends and lovers through a gray city.

This, the second outing for Maximo Park, is a straightforward, modern rock record that seldom stumbles and often exceeds the limitations of its form.

It’ll work both ways: bookish and ballsy.

Maximo Park
JH