Review Summary: Death of a Perfectionist
The quality that first attracted me to the music of Shearwater was the supernatural light touch the band applied to their work. Albums ebbed and flowed like the natural landscapes their lyrics alluded to, sometimes rippling in a pool of contemplation and other times whipping up a mountain’s peak like warm currents of air. Everything sounded natural, everything felt just-so. The band have always been compared to Talk Talk and that made sense; their songs shared a similar tonal palette but beyond that Meiburg’s songs betrayed the tell-tale signs of an obsessive perfectionist at work in much the same way Mark Hollis’ output always did. Talk Talk started with commercial success, adhering to a pop format, before evolving into a more deconstructed and idiosyncratic beast; with Shearwater we appear to be watching a similar metamorphosis, just in reverse.
‘Jet Plane and Oxbow’ is Shearwater’s second album of original songs since moving to Sub Pop and builds on the approach they blueprinted on this album’s predecessor ‘Animal Joy’. That release hinted that for the first time Meiburg might have half an eye on filling stadiums and it took plenty of cues from heavyweights of the circuit like U2, Coldplay and Radiohead. The album was reasonably successful in fulfilling these lofty ambitions though something had been conspicuously lost in the shift, namely the band’s characteristic subtlety and Meiburg’s perfectionist song writing touch. Clearly ‘Animal Joy’ was merely laying the runway for ‘Jet Plane’s take off as the band have now flicked on those afterburners and launched into a full on mainstream assault.
For someone whose favourite Shearwater song remains the gossamer light ‘I Was a Cloud’ from 2008’s ‘Rook’ the ‘bigger, louder’ approach shown off here can make this album a somewhat punishing listen. If somehow you could ask these songs which believes itself to be the emotional peak of the album then no doubt at least eight of the eleven would stick their hands up, it’s absolutely exhausting. Meiburg has become the opera singer who can’t help breaking into song in regular conversation; a man who’s fallen head over heels for the sound of his own voice. On the Radiohead ‘I Might Be Wrong’ aping ‘Glass Bones’ he goes as far as to ask ‘is it hard to swallow?’; well Jonathan, now you come to mention it, yes it is a bit. Perhaps Meiburg believes he can clear a position at the top table by literally blowing Chris Martin’s head off his shoulders such is the unrelenting nature of his Force 10 bellowing here. It’s a strong voice for sure, but it was always the impressive range of tones and subtle inflections that impressed, not just hitting high note after high note.
None of the material here sounds anything less than ‘good’, and much of it is a great deal better than that, more it’s the lack of variation and an impenetrable glossy sheen that are this release's undoing. Unsurprisingly its the songs that harken back to the more restrained style of their Island Arc album trilogy that impress most here; ‘Backchannels’ is built around an elegant arrangement that never threatens to bully Meiburg’s voice into straining; ‘Only Child’ would have been cast as the emotional heart of one of their earlier albums but here it could sadly go unnoticed; while the rickety rock of ‘Radio Silence’ and the near-ambient tones of ‘Stray Light at Clouds Hill’ make for a well-judged closing pairing. There is however one experimental song that breaks the mould and elevates itself to the level of album highlight; ‘Filaments’ is an intriguing mix of twitchy Talking Heads rhythms and exotic Eastern instrumentation that proves to be a surprisingly effective match to the band's otherwise bombastic modus operandi.
‘Jet Plane and Oxbow’ is Shearwater’s boldest statement yet and for that alone they should be applauded, there’s certainly no lack of ambition here and the creative juices are flowing just fine. It would be over the top to suggest the band threw the baby out with the bathwater when they signed to Sub Pop back in 2011 but it’s still hard to shake the feeling Shearwater lost a little something along the way, a quality they could yet retrieve. Listening to a song like ‘Filaments’ you can’t help but imagine there are stunning new vistas forming in Meiburg’s mind; here's hoping he also thinks to cast his memory back to the perfect ones he imagined not so long ago.
