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If you've previously thought off Shearwater as an Okkervil River side project, then now is the time to reevaluate that stance. Hailed as "almost impossibly majestic and beautiful" (NPR), Shearwater's Palo Santo (2007, Matador), a suite of ethereal but oddly disquieting art-rock songs loosely centered around the life and death of singer Christa Paffgen (aka Nico), marked the Texan quartet's debut on the national stage. The New York Times named the album one of the year's very best, and the band's singular combination of sonic abandon and restraint, spun around the soaring, otherworldly voice of part-time ornithologist Jonathan Meiburg - drew comparisons to late-period Talk Talk and both the lovely and anxious moments of Eno's early solo work.
This year'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. Squalls of feedback have largely given way to sudden gusts of strings and woodwinds, though the band's fondness for unusual instrumentation remains intact - harp, hammer dulcimer, and a curiously carved metal box all take featured roles. Each song is a mini-epic, from the in-medias-res opening of "On the Death of the Waters" to the pounding (but drumless) urgency of "Leviathan, Bound", the abrupt rock of "Century Eyes", the crystalline depths and heights of "I Was a Cloud" and "The Snow Leopard", and the final, elegant flourish of "The Hunter's Star". Rook is unlike any other album you'll hear this year. It has the clarity and yearning ineffability of a waking dream, the strange beauty and internal logic of a fairy tale, and above all, evokes a vanishing world that may or may not be our own.
Presse:
"Hollis acolytes or not, these are hardly song-sketches; all of them are careful compositions adding new instruments, moods, and sounds around the anchor of Meiburg's voice. The edges of these otherwise lulling, hypnotic songs hint at danger and chaos." (Pitchfork Media)
"Each year, it seems like there are one or two albums that are so thoroughly crafted that they create worlds of their own, and by the end of the year, they're inevitably some of the most critically acclaimed. The place of Shearwater's Rook in that highly-esteemed company come year's end seems virtually guaranteed."
"Zwar ist die Soundanlage auf "Rook" so vielfältig, wie es im Indiefolk nur geht, doch in einem sind sich leise und laute, voll und reduziert instrumentierte Stücke einig: Sie sind enorm bedeutungsvoll und intensiv auf eine sehr rührende Art und Weise. Das liegt vor allem am theatralisch-sanften Gesang von Jonathan Meiberg, der sich damit in eine Riege mit Scott Matthew, Final Fantasy und Mark Hollis platziert. Dahinter haben Shearwater eine Klangwelt geschaffen, die die außerordentlich sinnliche und ausdrucksstarke Stimmung der ganzen Platte perfekt unterstützt.
..eine Atmosphäre, die über die ganze Länge der Platte hinweg bannt und in der dramatischen Disziplin ziemlich konkurrenzlos ist. "Rook" ist zwingend beim ersten und beim hundertsten Durchlauf. Sie ist gleichzeitig eindeutig und fein ausgetüftelt. Sie sollte groß werden." (Intro)
"Ihren Wind unter den Flügeln bekommen die Rooks vor allem durch die klassischen Shearwater Tugenden, eine wogende Mischung aus ebbender Ruhe und flutender Leidenschaft, die salziger Meerluft gleich beruhigend und anregend den Atem neuen Lebens mit sich trägt. Shearwaters schwerste, musikalisch aber paradox dazu unbeschwerteste Platte." (Please Belive Wordpress)
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