Halo Fauna

Durak (2008)

Brian Shultz

Most of the time on Durak, Buffalo/Brooklyn's Halo Fauna manage to break away from the Plan-It-X mold and manage to churn out jangly, indie pop-tinged, casually played folk-punk songs that are much closer to the Weakerthans than the Against Me! of old.

The one moment such familiarity rings out is "Rehashing Descartes," where Eric Ayotte unmistakably resembles a young Tom Gabel. However, it's actually the album's most memorable track, carrying a subtle type of urgency that finds Ayotte yelping the opening lines: "This is happening / our history repeats / and it's unstoppable." Still, Halo Fauna are very solid in the short album's other 23 minutes. Other musical standout moments come in the form of "Buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo [sic]," where unexpected riffs pleasingly interrupt the song's flow, and Ayotte trying a bit of vocal dynamism in "Blame a Bird for Your Shortcomings."

Their lyrics of personal confessions, storytelling elements and vague social/political analysis bear special mention too, however. Take the pitcuresque narrative of "Exposure, Processing, and Recording": "Box up the Mad Magazine with the Cracked, comic books and sports cards. / Action figures find sovereignty in a bin with the toy cars." "Futility and Familiarity" has some choice diction and a bit of a poetic nature: "A torpid digression to complacent bitterness. / When we see the tarnish on our potentials we'll shake our heads at our neglect to cover it in plastic. / … / I'm an old man who can't catch the Frisbee his granddaughter tossed. / The burden of breath, a heartbeat, and self-pity."

It's a simple and fairly engaging formula, albeit far from overwhelming, but a definitively nice and pleasurable listen.

STREAM
Rehashing Descartes
Futility and Familiarity
Blame a Bird for Your Shortcomings
Infamous Apology