This coming Tuesday sees the release of the new Shearwater record, The Golden Archipelago. Here’s eMusic’s Melissa Maerz with an idea of what to expect.
Shearwater
The Golden Archipelago
[Matador]
Release Date: 16 February 2010
An explorer, ecologist, and folk hero, Jonathan Meiburg is the Jacques Cousteau of indie-rock. A former graduate student with a specialty in geography and ornithology, the Shearwater frontman named both his Austin, Texas-based band and their critically-acclaimed 2008 album Rook after types of birds, and his gorgeously pastoral music examines nature with a scientist’s eye.
Inspired by research Meiburg conducted everywhere from the Galapagos to a remote Aboriginal community in northern Australia, The Golden Archipelago is a vivid illustration of the isolation of island life. The opening track begins with an eerie incantation of Bikini Atoll’s national anthem, sung by exiled Bikinians evacuated from their homeland after the staging of nuclear bomb tests. Over a delicate interlay of piano, brass and string instruments, Meiburg pays further tribute to their memories in “Meridian” and “God Made Me,” two chilling tales of “the roar in the sky… and the flames that fall / like fireflies.”
But where there’s terror, there’s also wonder: on the percussion-heavy ballad “Landscape at Speed” and the music-box waltz “Hidden Lakes,” Meiberg finds himself awed by the secret worlds of plants and animals. Singing in a fragile falsetto about long-lost native communities and the flora and fauna that’s grown in their stead, he’s written a celebration of life — both the kind we’ve largely left behind, and the kind that goes on without us.
ok … is it any good?
.. I actually really like rook and I think it is overlooked…
Love the cover art, but Shearwater isn’t made for my ears at all.
Note that it’s streamable on NPR’s music website at the moment: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=123406907. While I appreciate Shearwater’s previous efforts, they were never really my thing. But this new one…definitely busier, louder, and I’ll certainly get it when it becomes available next week.
I love it, but I loved the last one, too. It’s definitely more ‘aggressive’ in some ways. I can’t explain why, but they really remind me of Climate of Hunter/Tilt-era Scott Walker. I think it’s his voice and the determination with which he sings.
This band just goes to show that if you add steaming piles of quasi-intellectual pretense and tin-eared falsetto onto your indie “rock” you can pull the wool over the eyes of lots of music fans.
Musically, I think this album is simply gorgeous. I’d love to hear it as an instrumental. :/
On Day 5 of this album and I must admit that it’s really grown on me. I keep unexpectedly returning to it.