Megafaun

All Music Guide:

When Justin Vernon left Raleigh, North Carolina by way of Eau Claire, Wisconsin indie folkers DeYarmond Edison to go on to late-2000s indie wunderkind status as Bon Iver, the remaining members of DE -- Phil Cook, Brad Cook, and Joe Westerlund -- carried on in North Carolina as Megafaun. With an impossible to pinpoint, laid-back lo-fi sound incorporating Byrds-esque harmonies, elegiac folk picking, and off-kilter instrumentation (think a rougher around the edges Fleet Foxes), Megafaun earned accolades beyond their feted former bandmate. The trio gained solid enough reviews for the sparse debut disc Bury the Square in 2008; however, Megafaun's sophomore release the next year, Gather, Form & Fly, on the Hometapes label, drew raves, with high marks from the Onion AV Club and Pitchfork. The mini-LP Heretofore arrived in 2010, followed by the band's eponymous third full-length outing in 2011.

Wikipedia:

Megafaun is an American psychedelic folk band based in Durham, North Carolina.Cite error: There are <ref> tags on this page, but the references will not show without a {{reflist}} template (see the help page).

History[edit]

Brothers Brad Cook (bass, guitar) and Phil Cook (keyboards) are from Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin, and Joe Westerlund (percussion) is from Eau Claire, Wisconsin. They first met at the H.O.R.D.E. festival in 1997, and played together in various combinations, including in DeYarmond Edison with Justin Vernon. After that band broke up in 2006, Vernon (Bon Iver) went on to record a solo project (2007's For Emma, Forever Ago), and Westerlund and Brad and Phil Cook formed Megafaun.

Megafaun's first release was Bury the Square in 2008, on which the band were described as "[doing] away with Edison's polite experimentation in favor of full-bore concrète music, harsh noise salvos, and wild free-jazz interventions". The group's second album, Gather, Form & Fly, was released in 2009 on the Hometapes label. It was described by Pitchfork Media as "a headily absorbing, occasionally unsettling listen", and by Drowned in Sound as "a tapestry of sound collages and a freedom with form which creates a richly textured whole". A third album, Heretofore, was released in 2010. The self-titled Megafaun was released in 2011.

Megafaun has toured with the Mountain Goats, Bowerbirds, Akron/Family, and in April 2012, The Drive-by Truckers, Damien Jurado (August 2012)among others.

The band released its first music video to promote the single "Carolina Days" on PitchforkTV during the spring of 2011. It was made by the art collective Sirocco Research Labs.

They played with Arnold Dreyblatt at the third annual Hopscotch Music Festival in Raleigh, North Carolina, USA which took place September 6–8, 2012.

In October of 2012, Megafaun announced on their website that they were going on indefinite hiatus "to re-tool the shed, so to speak."Cite error: There are <ref> tags on this page, but the references will not show without a {{reflist}} template (see the help page).