Rook

We Say...

Review by Barry Walters

The Eels song “I Like Birds” could’ve been written about Shearwater’s Jonathan Meiburg. This Austin, Texas frontman is a graduate student in ornithology, has named the band he started with Okkervil River’s Will Sheff after a seabird, and has titled Shearwater’s fifth album after a European crow. It’s nearly impossible to think of Shearwater’s intimate, emotional music — in particular, Meiburg’s seemingly airborne tenor — without such words as soaring, swooping or sailing. Both the quartet and its singer seem to be, like the winged life with which they’re clearly obsessed, on the verge of defying gravity.

Meiburg’s no longer an Okkervil River member, and unlike previous Shearwater albums, Rook does without Sheff's contributions. This is as it should be: Meiburg's found himself as Shearwater’s guiding force and focus. His wafting vocal performance here and the fluttering arrangements gliding around it transcend Shearwater’s initial side project status as a repository for Meiburg and Sheff's quiet songs. As the grinding midsection of opening cut "On the Death of the Waters" makes clear, Rook gets quite loud in parts. With its lopsided rhythms, multiple distorted guitars, and enraged Meiburg vocal, "Century Eyes" is unabashed post-punk.

These brief excursions in clanging fury heighten the hushed beauty of Rook’s fragile bulk. The band’s austere presence on muted guitars, keyboards, and percussion is magnified by strings, woodwinds and horns that maximize Meiburg’s poised sense of dynamics and drama as the instrumentation rises and falls in support of his keening cry. In "I Was a Cloud," the seemingly aerial accompaniment hovers as the singer lovingly contemplates a sparrow. This would be ridiculous if it wasn’t done with such disarming, heartfelt care.