thus spake drake: shearwater

Jonathan Meiburg of Shearwater, apparently doing research for latest release, Animal Joy. (Photo credit: Shawn Brackbill)

February continues to churn out (almost) great albums (we're a week away from a real grade "A" twofer, though). This week's crop is headlined by new albums from Shearwater and Islands, but there's also some interesting new releases from Field Music, Heartless Bastards, Tennis, The Kills, Earth and Band of Skulls.

Playlist: New Releases 02.14.12 (Spotify)

Shearwater - Tramp
Purchase [mp3] / Stream via Rhapsody / Stream via Spotify

Fresh off the oft exhilarating-and-sometimes-exhausting Island Arc trilogy (2006's Palo Santo, 2008's Rook, and 2010's The Golden Archipelago), Jonathan Meiburg felt it was time for a change. The three records were tied together loosely by theme and tightly by their lush orchestration, which makes Animal Joy's booming drums and a more stark minimalist approach make for quite a contrast in sound -- something more akin to Meiburg's old outfit, Okkervil River. While Meiburg's voice will never make you think you're listening to a different band, hearing the pulsing lead single "Breaking the Yearlings" must have certainly had some fans giving a double-take. The results of the change are mostly mixed, with the more rock-oriented sound often sacrificing Meiburg's gift for songwriting left turns for a more simplistic approach. For instance, I never thought I'd slot a Shearwater song in my workout mix, but "Immaculate" does the trick -- namely having the BPMs and being bland enough so as not to divert focus. I'm guessing a raise in my HDLs is probably not what Meiburg was going for.

Download: "You As You Were" [mp3]
Download: "Breaking the Yearlings" [mp3]

Islands - A Sleep & A Forgetting
Purchase [mp3] / Stream via Rhapsody or Spotify

I miss my wife / I miss my best friend every night
I miss my home / I miss my own bed and my old life
"I Can't Feel My Face" - Islands

It's been hard to pigeonhole Nick Thorburn's Islands. Since its inception, Thorburn hasn't had the same band members from release to release, and the each album reaches in an entirely direction, often within the same album's confines. While it's all resided within a 'smart' wing of the indie pop niche, it's been frustrating at times to follow. As often is the case, it took some tragedy to get Thornburn to stop moving, as A Sleep & a Forgetting deals with the end of his marriage. While the title suggests "Beware: Wallowing This Way," the songs never get too down, even when a lyric suggests that Thornburn never wants to get out of bed again. Thorburn's obsession with 50s doo-wop (as revealed with the Mister Heavenly project) helps keep the listener from feeling like he bought a ticket to Downer-Fest, which a confessional album like this often leads to. The final song (on the non-bonus release), "Same Thing," has Thorburn swearing he'll never love again, but at the same time he's searching the radio for a good station. We're left with the feeling he'll find eventually find something worth stopping for, both on the dial and off.

Free AOL Album Stream
Download: "This Is Not a Song" [mp3]

What a difference a week makes.

This first week of June is full of delectable delights for the ears, as a good three or four of them will undoubtably see some year end list action. Because I'm particularly fond of the new ornithological treat from Shearwater, many releases get the shaft, but I only have so many words in me per day. Other fine releases include the debut from Seattle's own Fleet Foxes, a double-album featuring Will Johnson's two bands Centro-Matic and South San Gabriel, the latest from Aimee Mann (featured last week,) The Futureheads, Oppenheimer, Ladytron and Sloan (in Rhapsody a week early!) If things work out, I'll touch on a couple more in the coming days.

Playlist: New Releases 06.03.08

Album: Shearwater - Rook

The bird-crazy band Shearwater (a type of seabird) are like ornithological troubadours, even usurping Andrew Bird and his winged whistling as the avian du jour. Jonathan Meiburg (ex-Okkervil River) writes songs that soar, keeping to their bird-theme, and Rook (a kind of crow,) much like Arcade Fire's more inspirational moments. But I think a more apt comparison for this album would be the transcendental moments of Jeremy Enigk's solo debut album Return Of The Frog Queen, with it's dynamics and myth-based storytelling.

Rook, for it's part, starts off very dark, with a boat being overtaken by the sea ("On the Death of the Waters") and what sounds like an apocalypse of sorts with the title track ("Rooks"). A rook is often believed to be a symbol of death, so the opening line of "Rooks" is rather frightening: "rooks laid in piles by the side of the road, they were crashing into the aerials, hanging from the laundry lines..." Couple that with "we'll sleep until the world of man in paralyzed" and it has me thinking of the end of times. Along those lines, Rook is an interesting choice of bird for this album, as it's kind of the shearwater's land-loving cousin (shearwaters, outside of breeding season, live in the open waters, some scavenging fishing boats for food). It's this balance of sea, air and land that encompasses the release, and the third song "Leviathan, Bound" [this is probably my favorite track on the album -ed.] suggests that the album is about the ecological battles our population is currently losing. Man's battle against the Leviathon is often portrayed as a battle to have reign over the earth, and the hunter that appears here and later in "The Hunter's Star" appears a doomed metaphor for mankind, who finds himself in "a world that will never return again, and no sound escapes from the night to come."

As a point of emphasis, the eerie instrumental "South Col" is accompanied by a passage from former French envoy to the court of Kabul, Rene Dollot, describing the stark landscape in Afghanistan:

The lunar landscapes of the Hindu Kush,
as if borrowed from prehistory,
seem still to wait for the arrival of the animal world,
or perhaps to announce it's end.

I'll admit that I came late to the Shearwater bandwagon -- too late, for instance, to even chime in on the brilliance of their previous album Palo Santo -- in part due to the theatricality of Meiburg's voice, which straddles the difficult point between a stylized Scott Walker and a more histrionic Antony Hegarty (Antony and the Johnsons). It takes some getting used to for some, but when it all finally clicks, the songs take to the sky.

Lyric Sheet (pdf)
Download: "Rooks" [mp3]

Album: Fleet Foxes - Fleet Foxes

Our very own Fleet Foxes have made quite the stir leading up to this excellent debut, which is kind of funny given that their very nature is very anti 'stir.' Much of their sound has a freak folk base, but far more reliant on pop's basic structures than any current entity in that tragically named genre. Between the reverb and the incredible vocal harmonies, it's hard to not play the Pet Sounds card, but the folky guitar strums send us in the direction of CSN&Y. Actually Akron/Family meets early My Morning Jacket is the first modern comparisons I could think of, continuing with the lazy critic game of connect-the-dots (that I find myself often employing late on a Tuesday afternoon,) but the point being that they sound like a seasoned, fully-formed band in their songwriting and sound, not that of a typical debut. Band Of Horses' debut sounded similarly polished, so perhaps it's little surprise that Phil Ek, the producer BOH's releases, is the man twiddling the knobs here. He's now the man to go to for reverb in the NW, that's for sure. All that reverb contributes to a pastoral feel for Fleet Foxes, and as far as a lazy summer day listen, you can't do better than this on your back porch in the coming months. The chorus to "Tiger Mountain Peasant Song" in particular has me already longing for some lemonade. If it would only stop raining...

Download: "White Winter Hymnal" [mp3]

More on the radar this week:
Centro-Matic/South San Gabriel - Dual Hawks
The Futureheads - This is Not the World / "Broke Up The Time" [mp3]
Aimee Mann - @#%&*! Smilers (Reviewed last week)
Sloan - Parallel Play (In Rhapsody a week early!)
Oppenheimer - Take the Whole Midrange and Boost It / "Stephen McCauley for President" [mp3]
Ladytron - Velocifero / "Black Cat" [mp3]
The Cool Kids - The Bake Sale
Radiohead - Greatest Hits
Ed Harcourt - The Beautiful Lie
Harvey Milk - Life... The Best Game in Town
The Virgins - The Virgins
Daptone 7" Singles Collection, Vol. 2
Bitter:Sweet - Drama
The Gang - Zero Hits / "Sea So" [mp3]
Weezer - Weezer (The Red Album)
Midnight Juggernauts - Dystopia
The Pinker Tones - Wild Animals
Paper Rival - Dialog
Reissue
Gary Numan - Pure
The Traveling Wilburys - The Traveling Wilburys - Vol 1 / The Traveling Wilburys - Vol 3
Minus the Bear - They Make Beer Commercials Like This

thus spake drake

Thursday, February 16, 2012

Now Downloading: New Releases 02.14.12 - Shearwater, Islands

Tuesday, June 03, 2008

Now Downloading: New Releases 06.03.08