From its outset, Megafaun’s Bury the Square seems almost — almost — to inhabit that lost freak-folk middle ground: an album lacking the genre’s abrasive weirdness (see: Devendra Banhart’s facepaint, little boy fetish) but retaining its earthy appeal. The first song reassuringly respires with the sort of peacefulness most albums work toward in their final moments, easy “ba ba bas” in a melody suggesting at once sunsets and memories of sunsets, worn, familiar, and brilliantine. And while the album does kind of stay true to these first impressions, imbuing the subgenre with some much-needed sincerity, it also gets really weird, too, dunking the breathy opening of “Where We Belong” into deep pools of dissonant static and infusing “Lazy Suicide” with a Brian Deck phantasmagoria of percussion. But rather than attempts to shake off Califone fans, these forays into extremism feel, for the most part, genuine, which is more than can be said for a lot of their peers (see: Devendra Banhart’s facepaint, little boy fetish). Even at six songs, the record feels replete but never overstuffed, and entirely heartfelt. – Clayton Purdom