Shearwater
The New World
POLYBORUS
In 1999, a year after forming Okkervil River, Will Sheff and Jonathan Meiburg created the offshoot project Shearwater as an outlet for the quieter folk-rock songs they were collaborating on as a songwriter duo. Their initial releases in the early 2000s slowly built toward the art-rock side of the Shearwater sound later in the decade—after Sheff’s departure—when Palo Santo and Rook broke through in the indie ecosystem at just the right moment. The band’s later run of albums would range in sound from post-rock (2012’s Animal Joy) to ’80s-indebted post-punk songcraft (2016’s Jet Plane and Oxbow) before returning to the ornate folk-rock of The Great Awakening in 2022.
The band’s eleventh album, The New World, is a beautiful record connected in spirit to Meiburg’s 2021 avian study A Most Remarkable Creature, a non-fiction hybrid of scientific thought, travelogue, and natural history biography. On the crowdfunded new release, the ornithologist dialed in on field recordings and globally rich instrumental/choral groups to soar into new musical environs. Shahzad Ismaily plays a variety of instruments here, while longtime collaborator Thor Harris hammers out time with all manner of percussion—most notably on “The Only Sound I’m Afraid Of,” with its tongue drum and congas. Members of the nimble Malian ensemble Ngoni Ba, qanun wizard Firas Zreik, and woodwind master Doug Wieselman also appear across The New World, while even Xiu Xiu’s Jamie Stewart adds in a gong flourish to the piano-and-strings stunner “Daydream Unbeliever.”
Every track thrums with natural sounds, making this Shearwater’s most ambitious and weightless record so far. There are phantom human voices heard on opener “Even Song,” Tasmanian forest ravens on “The Only Sound I’m Afraid Of,“ and everything from bees and song thrushes at Yuquot to bells and blackbirds in Berlin on “More and More”—and, more locally, the coyotes of Highland Park make an appearance. Atop these sounds, Meiburg’s lyrical approach flits like a bird between apocalyptic soothsaying à la The Weather Station and naturalist poetry on tracks like “Slugs in the Marigolds” and “More and More.” On the latter, his band creates an updraft beneath him as he sings in his high-flying falsetto with rich natural details: “Rain lifting off the Cascades / They’re telling you it’s dangerous / More and more / Sun rising like a red blade / Through silence / even stillness lies.”
The most memorable location Shearwater visits is on the final track, a spoken-word marvel from Laurie Anderson. “You and Your Dog” is a piano and clarinet piece rich with melancholia and memories as the instruments ebb and flow. Meiburg has cited Anderson as a massive personal and creative inspiration, with Anderson returning the favor upon the release of Meiburg’s nonfiction book. It’s a beautiful end to a sonically adventurous album. It seems only fitting that Meiburg left the US for Antarctica the day after completing The New World to drift in the pack ice of the Weddell Sea, a natural pairing for this small marvel of a record.
