Shearwater recently announced The Great Awakening, their first new album since 2016’s Jet Plane and Oxbow. Taken from the album, they have today shared a video for the third album single from “Laguna Seca”.
It’s an eerie and disquieting track, accentuated here by the video directed by Loma’s Emily Cross, which continues the storyline of her videos for “Aqaba” and “Xenarthran”. “Laguna Seca came from one of those dreams where you meet someone you know, but they aren’t themselves,” explains singer Jonathan Meiburg. “And then you realize that you’re not yourself, either.” The smile at the end stays with you…
With Dan Duszynski (Loma) as a fellow performer and co-producer, the album evolved through the long months of 2020 and 2021, emerging as a meditation on hope amid hopelessness, and the freedoms to be found—or dreamed about—in isolation. Some Shearwater veterans returned, including keyboardist and arranger Emily Lee and drummer Josh Halpern, but the rock gestures of Jet Plane fell away: The Great Awakening is a soulful and immersive travelogue of grand atmospheres and intimate landscapes, decorated with field recordings from Meiburg’s journey while writing his critically acclaimed debut book, A Most Remarkable Creature: The Hidden Life and Epic Journey of the World’s Smartest Birds of Prey, released in March 2021 by Knopf (its paperback edition arrived in stores last month). The non-fiction epic, which explores the lives and histories of the crow-like South American falcons called caracaras (social, curious, intelligent birds that have been mostly ignored by scientists), was ranked among NPR‘s “Books We Love of 2021” and received the prestigious literary Kirkus Star, in addition to earning praise by scientists, authors, and artists—including Margaret Atwood, Laurie Anderson, Scott Weidensaul, Charles Mann, and David Sibley.
The resultant 11-track album—anchored by Meiburg’s closely-recorded voice, more otherworldly and urgent than ever—is one that Shearwater’s been striving toward for years: a journey into the unknown, embracing sorrow and joy, beauty and terror.
The Great Awakening, will release in full on June 10th; you can pre-order it here in digital or physical formats.
For the Birds: The Birdsong Project
For the Birds is a 174-track collection of original, bird-themed music curated by music supervisor Randall Poster (Wes Anderson, Martin Scorsese, etc) to benefit the National Audubon Society, an organisation that protects birds throughout the Americas using science, advocacy, education, and on-the-ground conservation. Among the 220 music artists, actors, literary figures, and visual artists contributing are Yoko Ono, Yo-Yo Ma, Mark Ronson, Wale, Beck, Andrew Bird, Elvis Costello, Jim James, Karen O, Angélica Negrón, Calexico, Michael Uzowuru, Stephin Merritt, Karen Elson, The Flaming Lips, Nick Cave, and more.
Shearwater told fans that they are contributing an instrumental piece called “Kwitaro Backbone,” interpolating a favourite field recording of Jonathan Meiburg’s from Guyana—and an essay about birds, music, and war by Jonathan Meiburg forms part of a 60-page book for the boxed-set version of For the Birds (a behemoth 20-LP set). Our friend Emily Cross from Loma and Cross Record also contributes a song.
Learn more here: https://www.audubon.org/birdsong-project