Komedia, 24th November 2008

Shearwater are one of the hush-hush musical triumphs of the past few years. What began as a side project for Okkervil River stalwarts Jonathan Meiburg and Will Sheff, has evolved from a diversion from the main event into a main event itself. With Sheff tied into his commitments with Okkervil, Meiburg has broken free and delivered his own musical vision over the two albums, “Palo Santo” and “Rook”. And what a vision it is.

Singer and multi-instrumentalist Meiburg is by education an ornithologist – hence the band name, hence the album title and hence, one suspects, the sense of sweeping, elemental dynamism in the music. Opening song “On the Death of the Waters” finds Meiburg’s angelic vocals lilt across the most delicate of piano melodies, while somewhere there lurks a hint of growing menace that emerges in a crescendo of discordant clamour one and a half minutes into the song. The feeling is of being set adrift, alone, in a small boat on a vast, malignant ocean. Therein lies the band’s essential magic, with equal measures of transcendent beauty and bone-aching pain rubbing shoulders within the same musical framework. This is music soaked in atmosphere, evoking both a rich, earthy realism and the feeling of days spent under brooding Atlantic skies pining for some distant lover.

Crammed onto the small downstairs stage in the intimate surrounds of the Komedia, the band proceed to deliver an enchanting run through of the highlights of the last two albums, including a flawless “Leviathan Bound”, and “The Snow Leopard”, with the sweeping arc of trumpet, strings and double bass creating a stark soundscape coloured from the broadest palette of brooding greys. Meiburg’s voice is a wondrous instrument, chopping from choirboy falsetto to yelping anguish through “Seventy-Four, Seventy-Five” before the fuzzy rock shred of “Century Eyes” provides a rock-out moment to break the tension. While not everyone may take to Shearwater’s vision, it remains a startling musical flight of fancy for dark, thoughtful souls and one which left the Komedia audience spellbound.

 

Words by Joe Owen

Photography by Faye Perriam