Thanks God that Shearwater’s Jonathan Meiburg chose this particular moment to release his band’s eighth album, Animal Joy. Always one for hyper-literate prose, meticulous production, and ambitious concepts, Meiburg’s songwriting is in many ways the antidote to America’s current obsession with bedroom recording projects; the questions posed by Shearwater are weighty ones, and often the answers lie in places well beyond the solitary confines of a studio apartment. Indeed, you’re unlikely to find another band in 2012 that can navigate between volatile theatrics and startling intimacy with such deftness. Dude can conjure dreamy ambience as well as anyone, but the real joy of a Shearwater record is how even the most ethereal atmospheres retain an air of effervescence and immediacy.
Purportedly a step removed from the richly decorated prog-rock leanings of the band’s “Island Arc” trilogy (2006’s Palo Santo, 2008’s Rook, and 2010’s The Golden Archipelago), Shearwater’s Animal Joy exhibits a welcomed touch of minimalism while still concerning itself with many of Meiburg’s existential burdens. Bound together thematically by metaphors and symbolism concerning the ephemeral nature of the world’s fauna, the record finds Meiburg veering between enervated lamentations and paeans to doggedness as a Spoon-like prudence surfaces in the instrumental arrangements.
