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Shearwater – ‘The Great Awakening’ review

As someone who reviews a lot of Americana, I find myself referencing Gram Parson’s “cosmic country music” fairly often. Shearwater’s new album, ‘The Great Awakening’, is most definitely not country music — it’s indie rock — but it most definitely is comic, both lyrically and sonically. Jonathan Meiburg’s poetic imagery, often taking us into realms beyond the sky — whether these are purely physical or are metaphorically spiritual is a question the album poses for the listener — is set against shimmering, gossamer layers of sound. Dina Maccabe’s violin and viola playing hits the perfect emotional notes here, adding the ethereal presence of strings that makes this atmosphere work

I immediately picked up on the Nick Drake influences in this album, and I’m not the only one who’s seen that in Shearwater’s work. But tracks line ‘Laguna Seca’ hew to a very different sound from Drake, with pounding synths, and they sound more like Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds — instrumentally at least, as Meiburg’s voice is clearly nothing like Nick Cave’s. This album seems like a fusion of those influences, blending Cave and Drake; consider the first few lines of the opening track, ‘Highgate’:

‘Here comes your heart attack / Starless and bible black / And here is the endgame’.

That sounds like Nick Cave, but it also sounds a little like Nick Drake.

That’s not to say Meiburg is doing an imitation of his influences. There’s plenty of – and plenty weird – stuff that pure’s Meiburg here. In the second track, ‘No Reason’, he sings about ‘Encephalons / Ranging through time‘.

As a songwriter, I see some similarities between Meiburg and Neko Case. Both have a way of writing lyrics which, while I can’t claim to understand what they mean, I nonetheless find them compelling. I have no idea what is going on this stanza from ‘Xenarthran’ (which sounds like the title of a lost science-fiction novel from 1980s), but it’s a jam:

‘The question is / How do you fool the mind / You fool the body / What’s in the box / In the back seat / And dial down the senses‘.

Many of the songs here are closer to poems than narratives, though some, like “Detritivoire,” do tell a story. There’s a story in “Aqaba,” too, though the imagery surrounding the iris is so powerful, it actually disrupts the story, an effect which is likely intentional on Meiburg’s part.

There’s a lot of elements in ‘The Great Awakening’ I normally wouldn’t like: it’s more electronic than I normally enjoy, but it’s tastefully done here, and it works well in conjunction with Meiburg’s lyrics and with the atmosphere he’s trying to evoke. 

Shearwater’s last album, ‘Jet Plane and Oxbow’, which came out 6 years ago, was a highwater mark for the group. It was also an extremely political album, and ‘The Great Awakening’ is a hard turn away from that direction, toward introspection by way of nature and the cosmos. Meiburg and company pull of this material quite effectively, but not quite as successfully as they did with their last go round.

Shearwater - The Great Awakening
Credit: Polyborus

Track listing: Highgate 2. No Reason 3. Xenarthran 4. Laguna Seca 5. Everyone You Touch 6. Empty Orchestra 7. Milkweed 8. Detritivore 9. Aqaba 10. There Goes the Sun 11. Wind Is Love Record label: Polyborus Release date: 10th June 2022 Buy ‘The Great Awakening’ now

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