Rook is the record I’ve been listening to and enjoying, for a good while now. The album is the 5th from Shearwater, the band who I believe have finally shed their “Okkervil River Side Project” stigma. The band is headed up by Jonathan Meiburg (who I interviewed on Austin Sound earlier this week), who just left Okkervil River not too long ago, citing the increasing time commitments of Shearwater. Now, without a single mutual member, and with Shearwater’s hyped released of Rook, I think we can put to rest that side project description.

Having got that out of the way, we turn to the album. This song, “Rooks”, hints at a good number of the albums qualities: Thor Harris’ drums pull the song forward while Meiburg’s vocals take the form a delicate falsetto, though the lyrics are made all the more haunting by the octave. Rooks (which is a type of crow typically found in Europe - you’ll remember, Meiburg is a part-time ornithologist), followed by swallows and gulls, drop out of the skies and pile dead in fields and on roads, like an flock of albatrosses hanging around our collective neck. The lyrics are ambiguously distant, almost conceptual in their design, and hardly invite comparisons to Okkervil River’s Sheff who, with a background in creative writing, crafts lengthy stories based on well-developed characters. Nonetheless, unknown dangers haunt the lyrics (which are perhaps even more chilling than any of Sheff’s twisted story lines): “The ambulance men said there’s nowhere to flee for your lives, so we stayed inside / And we’ll sleep until the world of man is paralyzed.”

Shearwater will be performing Rook in its entirety tonight at The Parish, with the help of strings, brass, woodwinds, and the Austin Symphony’s own Elaine Barber (who I believe played on the album as well) on harp. It’s unfortunate that the album hasn’t come out yet though, because to hear it is to understand how essential all these extra parts are to the music. As Meiburg and I talked about, the instrumentation, especially the strings, on Rook is a core part of the songs rather than, as he called it, “window dressings.” Don’t miss this chance to hear Rook live in its intended form.

Tunes:
Shearwater - “Rooks”

Info:

Shearwater
at The Parish
Doors: 8pm
Tickets (via Front Gate - $12)

Rook is out June 3 on Matador.

Websites
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[myspace]

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