Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Sorry for this going up so late.  I've been super busy with school and all that kind of good stuff.  If you want to take some of my workload feel free to shoot me an email.

You may have noticed Shearwater back in 2008, when Rook practically took over the internet with its endless stream of rave reviews.  Or maybe you knew them long ago as that Austin band who played great live shows.  Well, either way I have good news for you.  More rave reviews are on their way for the new album, The Golden Archipelago, which came out yesterday.  Oh and they’ll be playing South By, for you show-goers.

John may have told you this already in a podcast a month or so back, but the new Shearwater album is good.  Real good.  Back to save the natural world from human interference are the intricate melodies and falsetto croons of Jonathan Meiburg.  This time around, Meiburg finds inspiration in exploring island environments with varying proximity to human contact - everything from the aerial bombardments of humans at war to totally serene isolation from humanity.  Largely, the album is Rook multiplied by a constant of about 300 (i.e. if you liked Rook, you’ll like this album).  Where certain songs on Rook felt disparate and disjointed from their brethren, The Golden Archipelago unveils its stunning dynamics as naturally as any of the unfurling landscape images Meiburg encounters.

Black Eyes is the first standout track on the album (even better than Castaways, the other big standout, in my opinion).  Similar to Rooks, also the second track on its respective album, the track seems to welcome the ominous mysteries surrounding the environments we’ll encounter.  The lyrics seem to suggest a sense of corruption, though we only get subtle hints: " ... in the black of the eye / in the heat of the act / in the crack of the ice."  Also, I should mention, it rocks.

:Shearwater - Black Eyes:

Of course, Castaways does have its merits, and is probably the most different compared to the tracks on Rook (you can make your own decision below).  The song proves what we’ve known all along, Shearwater have found a sweet spot in their sound, and could probably hit songs like these out of the park all day.  Most of these tracks, and especially the ones that move in new directions, don’t feel like experiments that take a minute to decide whether they’ll stick or not.  Instead, each song comes across as confidently as the next, with even the shorter or softer songs swelling up into their own triumphs (especially An Insular Life and Uniforms, both buried towards the end of the album).

:Shearwater - Castaways:

Moral of the story: Rook was good. The Golden Archipelago builds on that good, and as a whole album is better.  Listen to it, see the shows, you know the drill by now if you’re a Shearwater fan.

New York, trumpets, hard bop.  Those three words practically get me salivating (in an aural sense) these days.  And no one satisfies like Freddie Hubbard, probably the quintessence and the epitome of those three words.  I’d hard he was influenced at first by another one of my favorites, Clifford Brown, so I really only started listening intently to Freddie very recently.  On display today is his fourth album Ready for Freddie, dated 1961, which came a good half-decade after the hard bop movement really reached its prime but is none the less a vanguard of the style.  Marie Antoinette, the third of five solid tracks, is likely my favorite on the album for both the trumpet solo, and the excellent bass solo at the end (well worth the wait).

:Freddie Hubbard - Marie Antoinette:
 

- John Michael Cassetta -



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