Shearwater - Palo Santo

Foreword: The review below is for Shearwater's Palo Santo release on Austin's Misra Records. Since it's wsa originally released last year, Shearwater have signed with Matador Records. For the band's first effort for Matador, they have re-released Palo Santo in an expanded edition that includes newly recorded tracks and some of the existing tracks from the album being re-recorded. The original release of Palo Santo is pretty awesome, so I'm going to assume that the expanded/remixed edition on Matador is equal to or better than the one issued on Misra last year.

In 1988, I was the Program Director for a college radio station at a public university. We received tons of promotional material, cds, vinyl, and nifty little promotional items designed to get you to listen to the releases that record companies sent. This was critical in many occasions as the ratio between “shit” and “shinola” was weighted heavily in the favor of the excrement.
I imagine the same is true today.
The station received an oddly shaped package one day and inside the box, labeled “Spirit Of Eden,” was Talk Talk’s release of the same name, underneath a bright green Granny Smith apple. I only knew Talk Talk from their previous minor hits like “It’s My Life” and “Life’s What You Make It,” so my appreciation of the band wasn’t in full bloom thanks to the image that a notable video music channel created for my behalf. In other words, I wasn’t real excited about a new Talk Talk album, but thanks to that clever promotional material, I took Spirit Of Eden home and witnessed a transformation in my opinion of the band like no other. Ambient, meticulously produced and full of sound structures that would make the most avant-garde band envious, Spirit Of Eden is Talk Talk’s crowing achievement and an experience that is deserving of more praise than it typically receives.
I bring up this album because you may have overlooked it, the same way that I overlooked Shearwater’s Palo Santo when it was released last year. And while 19 years may have passed since Spirit Of Eden’s release, it seems more responsible of me to bring you up to speed on an album that’s been available for less than 12 months. Since it carries a lot of the same expansive arrangements and divine atmospheres, I want to make sure you don’t wait a few decades before discovering it.
When Okkervil River’s Jonathan Meiburg and Will Robinson Sheff started Shearwater, it was a disposable side-project. But thanks to Meiburg asserting control over the name and the songwriting credits, he’s achieved the ambition that was only hinted on in the previous Shearwater releases.
The music ebbs and flows throughout the disc with carefully placed reverb, antiquated string instruments and the occasional bits of shortwave radio noise. It’s all strategically arranged and it brings Shearwater’s most notable instrument, Meiburg’s falsetto, to the forefront. Occasionally drawing from equal parts Jeff Buckley and John Cale, Meiburg’s narcotic wails combine wonderfully with the moody backdrop to create a beautifully captivating album.
On “Hail Mary,” Meiburg ups things a little bit with a cathartic bit of aggressive delivery and atonal feedback. It’s a nice manner in which he keeps things interesting, but truth be told, the most powerful moments throughout the album are the ones barely heard.
Palo Santo is so unlike other releases currently available, there’s a good chance that it’s gone quietly unnoticed. And given the financial limitations of any independent label, there’s an even greater chance that there’s not enough clever promotional efforts to get people’s attention to what Shearwater have done with this stunning achievement.
Consider this review, then, your own Granny Smith apple.

This review originally appeared in Glorious Noise.