ALBUM REVIEW: And So I Watch You From Afar – ‘Megafauna’

Much like the band’s name, And So I Watch You From Afar could infer too many different things to pin down its true meaning. An unrequited lover? A modest fan? A stalker? It’s packed sentiment flits between each, and that’s a hallmark of their music too: a juggling act of vibrant and crushing post-rock with the tongue-in-cheek fun associated with non-mopey math rock.

With the release of their self-titled debut, the Northern Irish quartet were a pure mystery to pre-teen me. Certainly no connoisseur of GY!BE or Hella at the time, their sound was chameleonic down to its nightmarish Hieronymus Bosch artwork of a tea drinking bull. They’ve shared stages with big profile supergroup Them Crooked Vultures and LA’s hipster-punks Trash Talk. Their last record Jettison was a multimedia project joined by Emma Ruth Rundle and Clutch’s Neil Fallon. Previous record labels Sargent House and Equal Visions balance rosters of metalcore and post-hardcore heroes past and present. Now at Pelagic, the home of LLNN (the crushing baritone wielding Danes), Albini-championed Årabrot and Sugar Horse, it still begins the question: what are ASIWYFA?

On Megafauna, it seems clear that they’re never intent on closing the box on their goofball, experimental joy and a sound that can reach cataclysmic levels when they pick their moments. I recall a YouTube comment saying their music made them want to play Little Big Planet, and it seems roundabout a fair assumption, even here in 2024. The rockers are paying homage to the intimate community of their own Megafauna, their homeland down the coast from Giant’s Causeway. The fish-eye lens of the cover captures the band’s euphoria in front of another community: a baying crowd. The record pares back much of the seriousness to portray a breezy freewheeling nature that comes about from mates jamming in a room, and so often hinges on tearing at the edges of the riff motifs they employ.

North Coast Megafauna couldn’t combust as an introduction much more, featuring the only shortened vocal shouts to (almost ironically) herald the impending crunch that’s to come. Noodling melodies give way to a main section that consistently feels like it’s crumbling under its own weight. In flitting in and out of this section, adding more hammer-blows each time, it feels like a grandiose idea being brought down by a gang of imps wanting to reveal the funkier grooves that lie between. Which they absolutely do, a bopping feel that also makes up a large part of Mother Belfast (Part 2).

While this second-parter to a dual song feels like a fully fledged melody that could suit vocals, you couldn’t imagine voices masking the lines that Rory Friers, Niall Kennedy and Ewen Friers weave through. Years Ago’s lead voicings act much like vocal harmonies anyway, while Part 2’s piano stabs signal a near-uplifting chord progression that lets the stringed instruments do their thing. An isolated drum track section also throws the brain slightly, in a great way, much like Chris Wee’s bouncy playing on Button Days, slamming tom hits on the 2s and 4s and throwing in offbeat cowbells.

The group never feels content in just one place, which may be either Megafauna’s high point, or the most frustrating one. Do Mór’s hilarious cowbell is joined in frivolity by ascending and descending staircase melodies, hammer-ons, and a middle section that sounds as if it’s played underwater. Mother Belfast (Part 1) is partly patient, experimenting with muted dynamics before unleashing the album’s headbanger moment. Any Joy deals with moodier sounds and string elements that return to close Me And Dunbar with a soaring cinematic flourish. This hop-and-skip through moods, all within singular songs, sometimes do come across as uneven, but there’s no doubt it’s intentional to subdue the four-piece’s sporadic and vibrant take on post-rock. Ultimately, their whippersnapper playing makes up a huge part of the record’s intention through music alone: get together, have love for one another, and the positives will always shine through the foibles. And that’s well worth getting behind.

For fans of: Three Trapped Tigers, maybeshewill, 65daysofstatic

‘Megafauna’ by And So I Watch You From Afar is released on 9th August on Pelagic Records.

Words by Elliot Burr