The Texan quartet have come a long way since breaking ranks with the Indie-Rock inclined Okkervil River and this fine album , their fourth, is their most ambitious and fully realised work of art-pop to date. It a record that reveals something new on each hearing.
Whether consciously or not, the symbolism of the songs is rich with poetic Romanticism making me recall my schoolboy fascination with the oceanic mysticism of Coleridge.
There may not be a role in Shearwater’s world for the Ancient Mariner's albatross but as well as the rook of the title, there is a compensatory profusion of other birdlife - swallows, starlings, sparrows, robins ,gulls and a wren in the bonus track.
Birds have been a running (flying?) theme through each of Shearwater' albums to date.
This current catalogue of feathered friends is explained by the fact that bandleader Jonathan Meiburg is a trained ornothologist - clearly someone who knows his rook from his raven. That the rook is not such a reassuring image is emphasised by the striking album cover which depicts a scarecrow's worst nightmare as a murder of black birds infest the body with Hitchcockian zeal.
The self consciously poetic nature of Meiburg’s songs effectively dispenses with any reliance on standard rock'n'roll hooks or choruses. The richly melodic tunes are meticulously formed to hang the highly literary language scotching any attempts to draw any precise meanings from them. It is however fun to draw conclusions from the recurring refrains which seem rich in a sense of longing and foreboding.
There is, for example, an evocative role for Leviathan - the monster from the deep according to Greek myth . He is represented as "bound as his heart" to suggest an unnatural containment of a natural force. The significance of this is that the sea is elsewhere represented as the life source itself, from the rolling and breaking waves in the opening track - 'On The Death Of The Waters' through to references to the "ocean of lives" in ’The Snow Leopard’ and "a limitless life in the breath of each tide" in ‘Home Life’.
The contrast between the force of nature and moments of calm are respectively represented through lavish orchestral sweeps and lyrical piano.
Since mankind is not the protagonist it’s also possible to read some religious significance into the album as a whole. After all it begins with the image of "the wreck of the ark" and the mother who carries her child to "the edge of a dark river" makes you think of the baby Jesus being saved from the slaughter of the innocents. You can add to this, the decidedly churchy quality to Meiburg 's voice with his choirboy-like falsetto.
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At the same time, it is perhaps more accurate to draw secular conclusions from the lyrics which float between the threat of global destruction and the hope of survival. The one instrumental piece of the album is called 'South Col' and, in the sleevenotes,it is introduced by way of a quote from writer, Rene Dollot:
"The lunar landscapes of the Hindu Kush / As if borrowed from prehistory / seem to wait for the arrival of the animal world /
or perhaps to announce its end".
Like the themes of the album as a whole these lines speak of the paradox between premotions of doom and expressions of hope.
Perhaps comfort can be drawn from the fact the grim fate of the Rooks "buried in a feathering pyre" while in ‘Lost Boys’ a Peter Pan type figure announces "I take to the air, and I am everywhere, I am starlight, I am moonlight, over burning fields and bodies".
Aside from obvious similarities to the sound of late 'Talk Talk', there are traces of Antony Hegarty's intensely poetic vocals, appropriate enough since Antony & The Johnson's album 'I Am A Bird Now' is a title that in Shearwater’s world would surely be taken as hugely optimistic.
Shearwater have created a highly original and often beautiful album guaranteed to feature on many end of year ‘best of’ lists.
If you want to get a taster, the tracks ‘Leviathan, Bound’ and ‘Rooks’ are available as free downloads from Matador records at: http://www.matadorrecords.com/shearwater/music.html
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