And So I Watch You From Afar – Megafauna | Album Review

Potentially more-so evident than most artists' discographies, every record from And So I Watch You From Afar is host to an underpinning feeling, an emotion of sorts. The feeling of Megafauna? Everything that came before.

The group’s seventh LP, Megafauna is an ode to home for the Northern Ireland post-rockers; a lockdown-spurred tribute to the places and people that raised them, supported them and grown with them across the almost two decades the band have been active. A “distilled moniker for our peers”, as the band themselves cite.

Such a statement may be misleading though. Megafauna is not a cold and calculated merger of the motifs that underpinned their previous works. Nor is it a lazy, half-cocked recollection of their previous records – this isn’t the post rock equivalent of clip show episodes of The Simpsons. What it is however, is a brilliant retrospective look on both their career thus far and the journey they’ve travelled as creatives and people. Above all else, it’s a bridge between their once giddy youth and their matured current standing as one of the best names in the genre, a moniker ASIWYFA uphold here brilliantly.

Kicking into life with the rowdy, rough and playful ‘North Coast Megafauna’, here, ASIWYFA return to the horseplay of their debut self-titled albeit with the delicate finesse that can only come from almost 20 years in the game. As noodling riffs roughhouse with bouncy, rubbery bass and the wrestling walls of distortion that have come to become to characterise this band following the release of 2017’s The Endless Shimmering, this blanketing sentiment gets established from the offset. The immediately proceeding ‘Do Mór’, with it scaling wild, wind-swept rock soundscapes with mischievous jazz syncopation in a way that mirrors the rugged Northern Ireland coastline the band calls home, only emphasises this.

But as stated, the brilliance of Megafauna doesn’t lie with ASIWYFA reanimating old motifs with new techniques and confidence. This opening gambit may be fun, but ultimately only serves as the interlude of that aforementioned feeling that binds this album. It’s the absolutely fantastic ‘Gallery Of Honour’ and ‘Mother Belfast’ that realises everything fantastic about this brilliant record.

As the former erupts with the haste of 2011’s Gangs prior to enjoying the revelry of 2013’s All Hail Bright Futures and the intricacy of their cinematic endeavour that was 2022’s Jettison, the first part of ‘Mother Belfast’ – a track split into two parts – features that kind of towering awe that can only come from feeling dwarfed by a concrete jungle as a child. As for part two, there’s urbanite stomp, a metropolitan flair, a purposeful flair strut that borders upon the theatrical and dramatic; something that wouldn’t go amiss within in the soundtrack of the theatre release of Hamilton should it ever require a post-rock inclusion. All of this animates the feeling of Megafauna; a sense of fond remembrance of youth, home and the sentimentalism and subtle bittersweetness that come from reminiscing. ‘Years Ago’, the album’s morose moment, capitalises this fully.

Yes, this is inherent emotion may the most integral and evident element of Megafauna, but what truly makes this record special and this feeling so potent is its delivery. To be blunt, this is ASIWYFA’s most direct and raw record since Gangs. So off-the-cuff is this that it almost sounds live, spontaneous, and cultivated freshly from the studio where it was recorded. There’s no implication of laboured post-production, signs that the record was repeatedly ran through applicants and MacBooks to the point where the inherent human DNA is scrubbed clean and substituted with inferior artificial polish. Not only is such a production refreshing, but it only highlights both that emotion of the record, their ever present carefree experimentalism and the skill of this band as a collective; truly, no other band can make engaging and energetic post rock as seemingly spontaneous as this.

In all though, it’s the closer of ‘Me and Dunbar’ that really ties this record together. In a way that reminisces thoughts of fellow NI countrymen A Burial At Sea, it’s this track that just showcases everything that makes this record fantastic. Wide-eyed with childish excitement, saccharine yet composed, and featuring the most poignant closer to be ever found on an ASIWYFA record, the track almost feels like a core moment for this band; a place where they can look back on their history whilst looking ahead. With that in mind, those who have been following this band for years will no doubt get the most from this record, but regardless, Megafauna sees And So I Watch You From Afar standing unrivalled as one of the finest entities within the post and instrumental rock ecosystem.