Shearwater Rook by: Thomas Mendelovits Wed:18-Jun-08 Label: Matador Year: 2008 WB rating 67 out of 100

While Shearwater’s last record, Palo Santo (2006), passed without much fanfare, it seems this time round the Texans are determined to not fall by the wayside as merely an Okkervil River side project for that band’s former keyboardist, Jonathan Meiburg. Indeed, with Meiburg this year quitting Okkervil River, Rook marks Shearwater’s arrival as a band in their own right. True to this purpose, Rook displays an immediacy and stateliness, which, while lacking in dynamics, is made up for with the aesthetic directness of seasoned musicians as well as surprisingly brief song lengths.

Rook is an album of much potential reward. Fans of moody melodrama and literacy in the vein of Low, The National, Okkervil River, The Arcade Fire, Midlake or even Interpol will find much cause to rejoice in Meiburg’s emotive voice and the intensity of what is basically his backing band. ‘On the Death of the Waters’ begins the record with the lulling combination of soft piano and Meiburg’s close falsetto, but by the end of the track the band amps up and plays deafeningly loud. It’s certainly an impressive moment, like a Big Bang signalling the birth of electric rock ‘n roll, but you’re left wondering if these theatrics are really necessary.

As the centrepiece of the Shearwater sound, Meiburg’s anguished vocals are the type that need cathartic release, however, in relying on his band for these sublime moments of release the effect is somewhat false – as though he couldn’t bring it off himself. Throughout, clever arrangements lend the music grandeur but little else. And while the album is not completely based on Meiburg’s piano and voice, they return to this classic effect often and where the band plays more post-punk it comes off as half-baked – Shearwater are probably going for something more refined, however ‘Century Eyes’ basically sounds like B-Grade Interpol.

For an ornithology student from Texas, it all seems a bit grandly false. Where a band like Midlake pulled off the theatrics of Van Occupanther with a near-complete adherence to fantastical narrative constructions, Shearwater don’t impart the same mythic quality. Music like this strives for sublimeness, but the effect is less than magical on ‘Home Life’ if we tune into Meiburg’s lyrics. When the clarinets and strings soar above the Celtic percussion it is dramatic, but Meiburg sings “now the boys are away… slashing away at the forest walls with their bitter knives/sparks bloom in their eyes/and they never look tired/they never look tired”. In often singing about birds (rooks, starlings, and swallows all crack a mention, while the shearwater itself is a seabird), Meiburg at least has chosen some thematic material close to home, but the lyrics fall rather short in the splendour implied by his band and the tortured timbre of his voice.

As an instrument, Meiburg’s voice is superb and it is understandable that he quit Okkervil River to employ it to full effect with his own songs. Full of nuance, his voice has three registers and goes from a strangely deep and resonant falsetto (‘On the Death of the Waters’, ‘Rook’) to an angry shout recalling Low’s Alan Sparhawk at times (‘Lost Boys’, ‘Rook’), as well as an occasional Nick Cave-like snarl (‘Century Eyes’). Meiburg’s falsetto is his best tool, however, and is the device used across most of Rook. Paired with his simple, chord-based piano playing, it is an effective combination and marks him as a stronger presence than is achieved by most ‘singer-songwriter’ types.

With barely a major chord in sight, the overriding effect of the Shearwater formula is rather drab in its reliance on unrelenting, even obsessive, moroseness. Indeed, the first major progression signals the end of the record with final track ‘The Hunter’s Star’ – it’s barely a beacon of hope on the horizon. While music shouldn’t have to be broad in its emotional palette, Shearwater rely too much on a one-sided focus. Too often going for the jugular and occasionally verging on the pretentious, Rook is an accomplished if mostly repetitive example of solemn melodrama.