I remember the first time I went to my city’s zoo. It had just received a pair of elephants, which brought thousands of people to marvel at their grandiosity. I remember going right up to the side of the enclosure and making direct eye contact with one of the elephants, and at that moment, I started to cry. It wasn’t because I was scared of them. I was simply so overwhelmed with fascination that I could not process my emotion. And I was a bit sad that these incredible beings had to exist within a 4,000 square foot enclosure.
Elephants are one of Earth’s last remaining megafauna, and like most other large animals on the planet, they find their population endangered. Yet they march on, standing tall and marvelous and marching forth, even as the world around them burns. This is all a very extended metaphor to introduce softmore, the new album from Sydney-based band Mega Fäuna, which they call a collection of “musings on femininity”. One might argue that like elephants, femininity faces a similar kind of endangerment, yet powers on with incredible resolve.
Mega Fäuna are an all-female supergroup, featuring members of Australian bands The Buoys, Sweetie, Skeleten, and The Wiles. Those members are Freyja Fox (vox), Ellen Fitzgibbon (synth/keys), Lily Keenan (guitar), Lucy Warriner (bass), and Tess Wilkin (drums). They’ve put out a handful of singles and an EP, but softmore is their first full-length album, featuring eleven new tracks. And while each one has a certain softness (as the title hints), there’s also a good punch of intensity and a driving force behind them. MUNA fans will dig this record, for sure.
That balance of vibes — soft and sharp — reflects a theme of femininity that the band highlights: The “secondness” of it. Of course, that’s not to say that women are second to anyone, although patriarchal societies might say otherwise. Simone de Beauvoir famously wrote in The Second Sex about how femininity is a construct relative to the social environment, and how women must separate their organic and individualistic drive for freedom from artificial roles created to serve a purpose in patriarchy.
So on softmore, Mega Fäuna ask the question: How does a woman grapple with the contradictions of femininity, given that there is no one “right” way to be feminine? The title of the record itself stems from the word “sophomore”, which describes someone who has basic knowledge of something, yet has more to learn. Therefore, softmore navigates the continued experience of learning what it means to be feminine in today’s world, pondering which moments require softness and which demand a harder edge, when to embrace the bindings of gender or break free from them.
The album is very solid indie pop all the way through, with Fox’s vocals, Fitzgibbon’s keys, and Keenan’s guitars taking on an ethereal shimmer. Warriner’s bass and Wilkin’s drums remain somewhat dry in order to provide the necessary punch to each song. Some songs have a much lighter air to highlight the band’s focus on softness, while others lean into heaviness a bit more. A good example is when “new skin” transitions into “unheld”, and the synths fall back in the mix, allowing the rhythm section to bring out the intensity and the beat. “heartbeat” and “bb there” have an angular sound similar to an early R.E.M. track or something from The Beaches, while “sleep deceit” has a bit of an ’80s vibe to it, but in a way that the early 2010s might have honored. (Think CHVRCHES.) Meanwhile, the lead track “lifelike” and the title track soar with atmosphere, as if they were recorded outside during the witching hour, with the barrier between worlds almost threadbare.
While softmore muses about femininity, none of the songs mention it by name or get too ham-fisted when it comes to the subject. Rather, they remark on other feelings that could tie into the feminine experience. And like the theme of the album taking notes from Simone de Beauvoir, certain songs have ties to literary works. For example, “lifelike” stemmed from The Picture of Dorian Gray, and it examines living an authentic life compared to maintaining an image one can sell in an age where everything is an opportunity for capital. “sleep deceit” is about letting the dream world take over reality, taking a page from The Neverending Story.
“kiss the sky” doesn’t have a literary tie-in, but its meaning is more simple: “[It’s about] feeling alive as hell and not knowing everything, but enjoying feeling things and rejoicing in the fact that you will always have your own company if nothing else,” the band says about the track. It highlights the force of immanence, looking inward, which balances with transcendence, acting outward. Society has often associated the former with femininity and the latter with masculinity; however, every individual requires both in order to live a full life. Mega Fäuna sing of that necessary balance on “kiss the sky”, of feeling the vibes of the world around you and within you, citing: “It’s a love letter to yourself.”
Balancing transcendence and immanence is what makes softmore a great new album from Mega Fäuna. There are explosions of emotion that charge forward like a stampede, but softer moments that still stand tall. And yet the album does not — nor should it — offer any answers about what it means to be feminine. Femininity should always be explored, not assessed, because to do the latter would be to lock femininity in a box, or — getting back to the elephants — fence it into a cramped enclosure.
Rather, on softmore, Mega Fäuna celebrates femininity’s freedom. They break down the walls. They know exactly when to stand tall in soft reverence of the world around them, learning how they flow through it and how it flows through them. And they also know when it’s time to charge forward and make those who would entrap them start running for their lives.
Take a listen to “sleep deceit” below.
Written by Will Sisskind
