Shearwater Releases Rook

Jonathan Meiburg has a thing for birds. So much so that the amateur ornithologist has devoted the last several years of his life to studying the striated caracara, a species located in the Falkland Islands.

Meiburg is the principal songwriter and voice behind Austin band Shearwater. It isn’t surprising that it is named after a bird, nor that many of his songs touch on our feathered friends. Rook, the band’s latest and second proper release on famed indie label Matador, is no exception.

Meiburg and company (Kimberly Burke, bass; Thor Harris, drums, vibes and dulcimer; and a revolving cast of contributors) conjure a dense musical palette that uses the natural world as its touchstone. In addition to the aforementioned birds, trees, water, snow and animals all get equal Shearwater treatment, often to thrilling effect.

On Rook, Shearwater Perfects its Voice

Shearwater is at last comfortable with its abilities in the studio. Produced by the band, Rook is a record full of arresting folk ballads, electric guitar rave-ups, and piano-driven songs that go from a whisper to caterwaul in a second. Meiburg’s reedy tenor sits well atop these tunes, combining choirboy innocence with punk arrogance.

Many of the songs that appear on Rook were written during Meiburg’s studies on the desolate Falkland Islands, where its inhabitants daily tread a fine line between life and death. To translate these songs onto tape, Shearwater enlists strings, woodwinds, a harp and all manner of bells. Imagine the Bad Seeds fronted by Jeff Buckley on anti-depressants.

“On the Death of the Waters” starts unassumingly enough with Meiburg singing over a simple piano melody before the band crashes into a tremendous crescendo of horns and drums. The song is indicative of the band’s penchant for extremes, as Meiburg warns of impending disaster, “Turn your bow to the biggest wave / But your angel’s on holiday / And that wave rises slowly / And breaks.”

Meiburg vivifies the death imagery in “Rooks,” where crows and gulls fall from the skies and buildings to be fed on by starlings. The foreboding is upped a notch when Meiburg sings, “We stay inside and we’ll sleep until the world of man is paralyzed.” “Leviathan Bound” similarly mines cold desolation as Harris taps out the beat on a hammer dulcimer. Backed by a string section, harp and bells, few songs about the heart have been more beautiful or devastating.

Rook Thrives on Extremes

As on its previous releases, Shearwater adeptly switches gears from quiet to catastrophic, often within the same verse. While many of its songs can subsist on a simple fingerpicked acoustic guitar pattern, Meiburg occasionally straps on an electric for good measure.

The band stretches out in a multi-guitar assault on “Century Eyes” that underpins Meiburg’s manic desperation. “You were not the first to arrive / And will not be the last to survive,” Meiburg exclaims. “As the pigs and the oxen we bound to the wheel / Tear it off.” It’s an Orwellian world, with Meiburg staring down the barrel of eternity with something bad in hot pursuit.

Meanwhile, Meiburg barely lets his voice escape his mouth on “I Was a Cloud,” accompanied only by his acoustic guitar, a sparse piano, and harp somewhere far in the background. With the exception of Meiburg’s simple acoustic guitar arrangement, the supporting instruments come and go at will, with piano, harp, upright bass and organ all scarcely coloring the edges.

Palo Santo, Shearwater’s 2006 release, was a bold artistic step forward for the band. On Rook, the band settles comfortably into creating discomfort—even through a beautiful melody.

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