Shearwater Store

From Amazon: Featuring sparse, mostly acoustic instrumentation (lightly augmented by piano, violin, pedal steel, accordion, banjo, cello, and glockenspiel), Shearwater’s The Dissolving Room at times evokes musical forebears like Nick Drake and Leonard Cohen as well as indie songwriters like Belle and Sebastian, Smog’s Bill Callahan, and Elliot Smith.

Intended as a late-night album in the vein of Drake’s Pink Moon, The Dissolving Room showcases the songwriting talents of both Sheff (whose work with Okkervil River has been compared by reviewers to Will Oldham, the Magnetic Fields, and Lee Hazlewood) and Meiburg (who, with his distinctive falsetto, echoes Jeff Buckley and Thom Yorke) in terse, intimate songs about fall, hospitals, hummingbirds, and true crime.

1. “Mulholland” (Jonathan Meiburg) – 3:27
2. “Ella is the First Rider” (Will Sheff) – 3:38
3. “Grey Lining” (Will Sheff) – 3:25
4. “Angelina” (Jonathan Meiburg) – 2:39
5. “Sung into the Street” (Will Sheff) – 3:15
6. “Little Locket” (Will Sheff) – 3:12
7. “Military Clothes” (Jonathan Meiburg) – 2:17
8. “The Left Side” (Will Sheff) – 2:59
9. “Not Tonight” (Will Sheff) – 3:52
10. “If You Stay Sober” (Jonathan Meiburg) – 2:49
11. “Long Ride” (Will Sheff) – 1:32
12. “This Confiscated House” (Jonathan Meiburg) – 2:59

Austin’s Shearwater sign to Matador and debut with a completely refurbished edition of their critically acclaimed–and frankly magnificent–2006 album, ‘Palo Santo.’ The band have re-recorded 5 of the 11 tracks on the album, plus there is new cover art, deluxe packaging, and an 8 track long bonus disc. On top of all this, the 180 gram RTI-pressed double vinyl release contains an extra track not on the 2CD. More important is the music–a soaring, vast multi-instrumental song-cycle. Jonathan Meiburg’s vocals and songwriting recall bands as diverse as Roxy Music and Talk Talk. But this is unabashedly ROCK music, anchored by Thor Harris’s mighty drums.
Buy it at Matador

The first single from Shearwater’s “Rook” b/w The Rainbow (Talk Talk cover). “The Rainbow” is an exclusive, non-album track.
Buy it at Matador

2008’s much-anticipated Rook takes the band into realms both richer and stranger. Though a similarly haunted, elegaic mood – punctuated by flashes of dread and menace – pervades the album, Rook is its own animal, at once more accessible (the near-title track, “Rooks”, anchored by Thor Harris’ thunderous kick drum, a booming organ, and a stately trumpet line, could almost be mistaken for radio-friendly) and more accomplished than its predecessor, with a depth and grandeur that seem improbably packed into the album’s tidy 35 minutes.

SHE-15 2008-10-14