Happy Thursday, fellows and lassies.
Shearwater is the project of Austin's Jonathan Meiburg and Will Robinson Sheff, both of whom are members of the fan-fucking-tastic folk-crash band, Okkervil River. The group was conceived before Meiburg had joined the other band, as an outlet for Sheff's more barren songs, which would not have fit with the muddy aesthetic of Okkervil River's early releases. I've never heard their first album, but their second, 2002's Everybody Makes Mistakes, was a quiet and crushingly-depressing exploration of, well, accidents. Lonely pianos, Meiburg's high, plaintive voice, and a great deal of space. Winged Life, which was released earlier this year, flies closer to Okkervil River's rustling melancholy; it's very good, though, and there's a slowness, an ache, which was lacking in Okkervil River's last LP. Folk-pop for weeping - Sufjan Stevens without the prayer, Low without the bass.
That's the bio, then. Now the songs:
Shearwater - "Well, Benjamin". Perhaps the most 'stompy' of the songs Shearwater's released - closer to Okkervil River, certainly, than the bulk of their work. But the dauntless friendliness of the melody, the burbling organ, make it hard to refuse the track's appeal. It's about a pilot's lover, fatalistic love - "Because I thought it out, in the time I’ve got, and I don’t care if I drown or not: I just want to crash into that same cold sea." Sheff sings with a calm sincerity, that is, until a bowed acoustic bass sets the wheels in motion, folds the landing-gear up, sets to the air, and then stares back to earth. A dry-but-pumping love-song; an old love; a silly, serious, wonderful one.
Shearwater - "The Set Table". The final song off Winged Life, it's a long and meditative slide into feeling, electric guitars that tickle at long-calling voices. It takes only tentative steps till the drums stutter in, then finds room for a violin and some real (loud) voice. It's like yelling into a pitch black night, but only until a few lights begin to flicker on. Sad and fierce music for a big, lonely world.