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Crop Circle Jerk ’94 by Megapuss
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To The Love Within by Megapuss
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Surfing by Megapuss
When it comes to Devendra Banhart, I feel like you love him or you hate him. Some folks think he’s too weird while others think he’s too weird to be folk. Personally, I have a soft spot for him, his songs are always immaculately crafted and even though they may be a little odd sometimes, who else is making music like this?
So I was rather excited to hear that his awesome side project, Megapuss, was becoming a real project with a real album. I had the great pleasure of seeing Megapuss perform at The Hammer, performing along with a rotating slideshow of Lauren Dukoff’s photographs. The band was hysterical, the songs were a little rusty, but you could definitely see the potential in it. The band is made up of Devendra and Greg Rogove from Priestbird, and together they’ve probably made one of my favorite albums of the year.
The album sounds like a Devendra Banhart album for the most part, but instead of his usual “psych folk” sound, it’s more like psych surf, somewhere between a hippie love in and The Beach Boys. Every song is pretty eclectic, like Duck People Duck Man, about, well… duck people. But behind this trippy spoken word piece is a beautiful song, you just have to listen for it. There’s also the most rocking gay anthem I’ve ever heard, Adam & Steve, which even features a George Michael jam, backed by some bad ass drums. Nonetheless, this album is really easy to listen to, I’ve already gotten several people hooked on it.
Another sweet detail to this album is that the artwork was done by one of the most creative couples out there right now, Travis Millard and Mel Kadel. As it turns out, Devendra and Greg were recording the Megapuss album next door to Travis and Mel, and they happened to meet at the mailbox one day. They got to talking, and the next thing you know, they’ve made an amazing booklet of art. Travis was nice enough to send me some large images from the booklet, as well as some outtakes from it as well that weren’t used.
Everything is under the cut, another 18 images in addition to the ones you see above, so be sure to check those out. And I should probably warn everyone that there are some cartoon dicks and fighting and gore on the photos, so if you work in a church or for Sarah Palin’s advisory committee, you might want to be careful.
You can currently buy the album digitally on iTunes for $9.99, but the physical album doesn’t drop until November 4th, so be sure to mark your calenders, this is truly a gem of an album.
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