Austin Sound

With last year’s excellent remastered re-issue of Palo Santo by leading indie imprint Matador, Shearwater finally flashed the stunning sound that local fans knew they were capable of. Rook ups the ante far more than anyone could have imagined, however, evoking Jonathan Meiburg’s swooning vocal range and grand vision to full effect. Simply put, Rook establishes Shearwater among Austin’s leading indie exports alongside Spoon and Okkervil River, and with the recent announcement that the trio will be opening shows this summer for Coldplay, they’re hardly any longer a local secret. And needless to say, the unfortunate Okkervil offshoot tag has been firmly laid to rest.

Meiburg’s gorgeously trembling trill has long awed Austin, so much so that it’s become somewhat familiar and taken for granted. Shearwater’s fifth LP dramatically re-asserts that power, though, with Meiburg assuming a confidence and control like never before and the band complimenting with a balance of swelling arrangements and delicately hushed intimacy. Opener “On the Death of the Waters” sets the juxtaposition at the start, lullingly soft to begin behind sparse piano notes only to erupt in a din of howling guitar and flaring horns. The sound throughout is absolutely immaculate.

Rook plays like a dark dream cycle, impressionistic movements that flit and disappear with near apocalyptic imagery. When Meiburg seers vitriolic on “Rooks,” it’s nightmarish, his croon building into spite with the line “the ambulance man said there’s no where to flee for your life, so we stay inside and we’ll sleep until the world of man is paralyzed.” The counter of gorgeous chiming lullaby and doomed rage is so intricately and seamlessly interwoven that the world Shearwater unfolds seems both epically transcendent and disturbingly brutal. It’s the Miltonic soundtrack of angelic feather-flown fury raging down from Heaven with Satan’s fall. “Leviathan, Bound” even chimes mythic in scope, but of myth brought down by modern man.

“Home Life” may be the most mesmerizing of the songs, the 7:15 minute track dropping into a nostalgic subconscious with Thor Harris’ hypnotic percussion and slow pluck of piano and guitar, while the strings cut any sense of whimsy with dark memories swelling beneath the stream of consciousness flow. “Lost Boys” similarly floats in childhood fantasy turned eerily haunting, martial drums exploding against the gloming sky, while “I Was Cloud” drifts gauzily ethereal.

“Century Eyes” roars raw and primal, rock riffs and Meiburg howling in a just over 2 minute burst, and “South Col” is all unsettling amplifier drone and metallic scraping that recalls Thor’s own instrumental work. As Meiburg lilts operatic on closer “The Hunter’s Star,” the world seems sunk in dire silence: “No sound escapes from the night to come” he concludes, and there really is no way to follow the sheer beauty and emotional surge of Rook except with silence. There is hardly a blemish to be found on the ten tracks; one of the year’s best albums, in Austin or otherwise.

Mp3 from Rook:
Rooks
Leviathan, Bound

Websites:
http://shearwatermusic.com
Myspace