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Megafaun : Megafaun

Hometapes Megafaun has hinted at grandeur before, but—then again—the North Carolina trio have hinted at a lot of things during the years. The group’s past two albums and mini-LP have darted adroitly between good-natured post-jamband invention, worthwhile avant-garde detours and brotherly harmonies, but only this self-titled hour-long disc finds balance. Beginning in the band’s Grateful Dead mode, with the “Row Jimmy”-like refrain of “Real Slow,” brothers Phil and Brad Cook and drum-brah Joe Westerlund set themselves on their most expansive course to date, passing between field recordings and gamelan (“These Words”), Summerteeth -era Wilco-pop (“Second Friend”), intimate quiet (“Kill the Horns”), semi-provocative anti-amateurism (“Kill the Horns”) and the occasional bon mot of hippie wisdom. No arrangement surprise is left unturned, no passed-down melodic fragment unharmonized, but none is wasted either. The strings, horns and flourishes remain miraculously un-extraneous, emerging without guile from a refreshingly inviting vision of how to make American music in the 21st century. It can be a ponderous gesture to release a self-titled album, but the musicians in Megafaun have earned the right, and solve the puzzle of how to be themselves—all of their different selves—simultaneously.