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SHEARWATER
Rook
Matador Records
(Release Date: 6.3.08)

 The most telling aspect of Shearwater’s fifth LP comes at the top of charging ripper “Century Eyes.” Amidst the jangling of metallic acoustic guitars is a quarter-inch chord finding its way into the input of an electric guitar. A split second, then the race is on. It’s a minute sampling, but the brainchild of Jonathan Meiburg intended for such. Because with Rook, coming in at just under forty minutes, it’s all planned, laid out with not a minute to spare.

Rook plays as a packed punch of secular mythology, tales of “The Snow Leopard” and “The Hunter’s Star” seemingly only more fabled when crutched by Meiburg’s theatrical cantor. Earlier this year, Meiburg parted ways with the nationally popular Okkervil River to focus solely on Shearwater's more textured music. Meiburg is that Buckleyan figure, the visionary that knows no limitation of genre, no confining box or space. Like Buckley, Shearwater exists in a world void of time and place. Cues are taken from romantic poetry, 1970’s British folk, Biblical sea monsters (“Leviathan Bound”) and progressive rock. Meiburg knows there’s no limit on the possibilities of that which cannot be classified. It’s what generates an unforeseen diversity in the stagnant piano-based aura that dominates Rook. It’s the beautifully harsh change of pace in “On The Deaths of the Waters,” the grandiose guitars filling “The Snow Leopard.” For Shearwater, running their own world has far more appeal than living in the confines of what’s been previously set out for them.