Shearwatermania!!!

Very excited about Shearwater's Animal Joy, the 2012 album that I have listened to the most this year and which is so far unchallenged for the #1 spot. Also very excited about my interview with Jonathan Meiburg, which is running during release week at PopMatters. Yay!

Animal Spirits: an Interview with Shearwater’s Jonathan Meiburg
By Jennifer Kelly

“By the end of The Golden Archipelago, I felt like I’d become the great green floating head of Oz in the sea. Even the art of the last album shows a figure looking off into the distance, and, to me, that’s what the record sounds like,” says Jonathan Meiburg, the singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist who has, for more than a decade, headed Shearwater. “For this record, I wanted to make something that was much more immediate, much more upfront, and also much more personal.”

Meiburg began to feel the onset of a new phase during a January 2011 show in Austin, Texas when he and his band played all three of the linked “Island Arc” records in a row, first Palo Santo, then Rook, then The Golden Archipelago. “I had the feeling as we were playing that was moving through time,” he explains. “When we started the first album, I felt like I was back in 2006 and as the evening went on, it progressed forward to the present moment when we finished the last note of the last song.” As the night ended, Meiburg says he sensed a resolution. “It wasn’t so much that I thought this was over, exactly. I just thought that a particular phase was finished and an approach that had gone as far as I wanted to take it,” he explains.

The rest

"You As You Were"

"Breaking the Yearlings"

I interviewed Jonathan a long time ago for Neumu, around the time of Winged life, and you can read about that here if you like. It's kind of an origin story...about back when Will Sheff was in the band and so on. There are more birds in that one.

Best faves through january

So I think I'm going to do this once a month or so, just to remind myself about what I was liking a few weeks ago and how it compares to what I'm liking now...also I'd love to hear what everyone else is into early on in 2012, if there's anyone out there anymore. Anyway, here are my favorite records through January.

Shearwater, Animal Joy (Sub Pop)...way out in front, more visceral than you'd imagine Shearwater could be, but also incredibly fragile, spiritual, delicate. I've got a PopMatters feature in the works on this (by which I mean, it's all done and god knows when they'll decide to run it...June would be about par for the course).

Sharon Van Etten, Tramp, (Jagjaguwar)...wrote about this one for Dusted, an almost ideal consolidation of her beautifully vulnerable, spare debut and her lusher, guttier Epic.

Damien Jurado, Maraqopa, (Secretly Canadian)...Jurado's second collaboration with producer Richard Smith is warmer and more immediate than Saint Bartlett, marginally more rocking, but still has a core of unknowability and mystery...the songs sort of glow in the dark. (I've got a slightly more coherent review in the pipe at Dusted on this.)

The Twilight Sad, No One Can Ever Know (Fat Cat)...Just finished my review of this one, and kind of too exhausted to try to find another way to say that this one is chillier, dryer, more rhythmically intense than previous outings, but with a really intriguing overlay of synthesizers.

Mark Lanegan Band, Blues Funeral (4AD)...I've barely started on this, but what can you say...that voice...chills. (also, did you ever think you'd hear gated snare on a Lanegan record? Me neither.)

Sharon van Etten

I'll be writing about Sharon van Etten's third album Tramp later for Dusted, but meanwhile, let me just say that it's great and it builds on the guttier, more empowered things she was doing with Epic without, in any way, compromising the fragility and purity that you heard in her self-titled debut.

It's gotta be top ten for 2012 -- along with Shearwater's Animal Joy -- and if you live in a major city in the eastern half of the U.S. or Canada, you've got a pretty good shot at seeing them together. Lucky you.

Dates
02/10/12 Philadelphia, PA - Johnny Brenda's w/ Shearwater
02/11/12 Washington, DC - Black Cat w/ Shearwater
02/12/12 Carrboro, NC - Cat's Cradle w/ Shearwater
02/14/12 Columbus, OH - Wexner Center w/ Shearwater
02/15/12 Newport, KY - Southgate House w/ Shearwater
02/16/12 Chicago, IL - Lincoln Hall w/ Shearwater
02/17/12 Chicago, IL - Lincoln Hall w/ Shearwater
02/18/12 Minneapolis, MN - Cedar Cultural Center w/ Shearwater
02/21/12 Toronto, ON - Lee's Palace w/ Shearwater
02/22/12 Montreal, QC - Il Motore w/ Shearwater
02/23/12 Boston, MA - Paradise w/ Shearwater
02/24/12 Brooklyn, NY - Music Hall of Williamsburg w/ Shearwater
02/25/12 New York, NY - Bowery Ballroom w/ Shearwater

Here's "Serpents" from Tramp

Wow I just listened to the new Shearwater eight times in a row

It's extremely good.

It's called "Animal Joy" and it's out in February on Sub Pop.

More later.