Noise: SFBG Music Blog - The sheer beauty of Shearwater, coming soon to Great American Music Hall

SHEARWATER
Rook
(Matador)

By Todd Lavoie

Shipwrecks, burning bodies, scattered deaths and sweeping acts of violence - welcome to the cold troubled world of Shearwater's fifth release, Rook, a world in which everyone and everything seems to be classified as either predator or prey. Here, hunters lurk behind tempo changes, bigger birds feast upon the carcasses of smaller birds to the flutter of circular guitar patterns, and the mighty ocean swells in cruel crescendos, threatening to engulf us all.

Scared? Intrigued? Titillated? Well, all of the above would be perfectly appropriate - the disc works plenty of heartbeat-skipping hoodoo from its gripping whirls of hushed ambient textures, elegant orchestral-pop melodrama, and jugular-bulging rock 'n' roll bombast. At the center of it all is singer-songwriter Jonathan Meiburg, a mild-mannered ornithologist - or, I assume he is mild-mannered, anyway, considering his expertise in the quiet, meditative field of bird-watching - who does not write lyrics as much as composes metaphor-heavy abstract poems and sets them to intricate song structures with little interest in rote verse/chorus/verse design.

Then, of course, there is his voice: a gorgeous, enormously versatile instrument that often manages to pack years worth of conflicting emotions within a single phrase, it is without doubt the swooping, howling-falsetto focal point of Shearwater's woodwind-and-string-laden experimental theatrics. Meiburg's expressive abilities are such that it's tough to imagine the idea of a casual Rook listener: his delivery, sensitive to every nuance demanded by the lyrics, tends to pull me ear-first against the other end of the microphone, eagerly awaiting the next word from his lips. Elements of Scott Walker come into focus, traces of Jeff Buckley. Here and there I hear Antony Hegarty, Thom Yorke. And lastly - but certainly not least - I pick up a lovely Mark Hollis (Talk Talk) vibe. Those who followed Talk Talk's metamorphosis from decent electro-pop outfit to one of the chief architects of post-rock will surely squeal in delight upon discovering Shearwater's daring forays into similarly oblique territories.

There are some clear common threads between Shearwater and the truly groundbreaking '80s/early '90s English band. Meiburg's plaintive vocals certainly reflect those of Hollis, and his band's whispered passages and concentration on the silent gaps between notes, frequently juxtaposed with blasts of shiver-inducing sonic let-go, do great justice in continuing the legacy of Talk Talk's much-feted 1988 masterpiece The Spirit of Eden (EMI).

A similar embrace of jazz experimentation and modern classical-composition sensibility echoes throughout Rook as well, thus defying categorization in ways not unlike that of its spiritual godfather. (One significant difference, however: Shearwater are far more willing to bring the capital-r Rock, as evidenced by the thundering full-throated yelp of "Century Eyes," for example.) Shearwater even elected to show off their Talk Talk gratitude with a revelatory cover of The Spirit Of Eden's "The Rainbow" as the b-side on their recent "Rooks" 7-inch single. Completists, you seriously need this.

Rook floats into perception amidst gentle murmurs of piano and a weightless Meiburg vocal as the listener is thrust onto a ship about to crash. Despite the drama about to unfold, our narrator flutters above, removed and detached - much like the uncaring night sky he describes in smooth sighing legatos. And so begins "On the Death of the Waters" - with a sense of serenity you know just won't last. For good reason, too, as the following lyrics should tip you off: "Turn your bow to the biggest wave / but your angel's on holiday / and that wave rises slowly /and breaks." Just as Meiburg finishes elongating the last fateful word by slicing it clean with a hard "S" sound, a tempest of horns, guitar feedback, and raging drums burst into focus - perhaps minus the brass section, there is something downright Pink Floydian about the unsettling outburst. (Think The Wall or maybe even more accurately The Final Cut.)

Forty seconds later, the storm has passed, the bodies have been strewn - and the song recedes in a trail of delicate piano notes, as if the carnage never happened. "Rooks" could very readily lend itself to a litany of interpretations, but I prefer to think of it as a vision of a world in which mankind slowly dies off and world-supremacy is taken over by birds. Still, any illusions of a possible birdtopia are quickly squashed by the brute reality of the animal kingdom: "Where the swallows fell from the eaves / and gulls from the spires / The starlings, in millions / would feed on the ground where they lie." A mesmerizing circular guitar pattern ripples away underneath the storytelling as Meiburg delivers the curious kicker: "So we stay inside / and we'll sleep until the world of man is paralyzed."

"Leviathan, Bound" begins with the insistent ringing of a dulcimer, joined by a howling cry of falsetto from Meiburg. A similarly intense minimalist-piano thrust joins in, but the gravity of the accompanying hunter-and-hunted imagery is somewhat leavened by xylophone twinkles and twirling string-section embellishments. Lest anyone think the darkness has nearly passed, Meiburg imparts this shuddering image: "Where the great dark body writhes / and the trembling jaw / the unfathoming sounds / of Leviathan, bound." Not exactly a lullaby.

"Home Life" is the disc's sprawling, all-consuming highlight, a seven-minute shapeshifter that gathers its hypnotic pull from rolling tom rhythms that feel quite reminiscent of the drum-language complexities of Talk Talk's Paul Webb. That being said, this is perhaps the track most likely to garner comparisons to the band, thanks also to the inventive use of woodwinds and Meiburg's Mark Hollis-like ghost-falsetto. It also boasts some of the album's most alluringly obtuse imagery, folding elements of the natural world into the gradually unwinding human drama with gloriously open-ended results.

This is a theme which recurs throughout Rook, particularly effectively on the haunting cool-falsetto-pirouetted "I Was a Cloud," its curious blurring of bird imagery and interpersonal sentiment making for a nice round of poetic head-scratching against the song's exquisitely understated piano and guitar textures. "Fear for your home life, sparrow," Meiburg warbles ominously, thus yanking us from any sort of fleeting pastoral reverie. "Fear for your home life." Such strangely unnerving pleas seem to be a regular occurrence for Shearwater - and as much as I might flinch in expectation of that crushing final blow each and every time, I cannot help but come back for more.

Here's a clip "Rooks" playing against a backdrop of the album art: