Shearwater: Rook

Shearwater is one of my very favorite bands, and one of the few bands that I can confidently say will be remembered a long time from now, so it seems odd that it's taken me nearly a month to write anything about it. The reason for this is two-fold; the first reason is that this is the type of album that takes time to digest, to understand in whole. The second reason is that I wanted to wait until I could acquire the album on vinyl and listen to it that way, before I wrote my final thoughts on the album. My thoughts are this: this is one of the best albums of the year and the best full-length album the band has released (the Thieves EP is in a different category all together). It may not have the dynamic, standouts that Palo Santo had, or the contrasting in singers and songwriters that Winged Life has, but it is the band's most consistent, mature, elegant, and best constructed album. The Talk Talk influence that lay beneath the surface of previous albums is brought to a head here, with almost every track save "Century Eyes" having the stamp of Spirit of Eden and Laughing Stock on it. That's not to say that this is a Talk Talk tribute album, indeed not. Besides the band's own considerable original input, there are traces of Nico, John Cale, and even Van Morrison in here. And besides, Talk Talk is a band that is incredibly under referenced by non-instrumental groups. However, all the staples of a Shearwater album are here, Jonathan Meiburg's stunning, otherworldly, choirboy vocals, and the blend of piano, banjo, electric guitar, bass, and drums that forms the foundation of so many of the band's songs. Each song is also accented with multitudes of strings, horns, harps, woodwinds, and even the world percussion instrument or two, in such a way that balances perfectly the dark, organic base of the songs with grand, sweepingly majestic flourishes. It's a dense, albeit painfully short album, that places Shearwater firmly in the upper-echelon of mature, professional bands.
Note: the album's b-sides "North Col", "So Bad", and "The Rainbow" (a Talk Talk cover) are all worth checking out, and are available as bonus tracks on the itunes release of the album.
Listen ("Leviathan Bound")