Shearwater don’t repeat themselves, and Slugs In The Marigolds — the third single from The New World — catches them in a mood we haven’t heard before: slinky, sunlit, almost carefree. It arrives today, after Daydream Unbeliever and More and More, with a video directed by frontman Jonathan Meiburg and Jason Benson.
The track begins mid-stride, as though you’ve wandered in on the band rehearsing in an empty warehouse. Doug Wieselman’s saxophone slips in alongside the groove, casual and gorgeous, summoning the ghost of Roxy Music. “This was a band favourite on The New World,” Meiburg says. “We liked how its loose, sunny feeling plays against the lyric — and we loved how Doug’s sax slithers up beside you.”
That tension is the point. Against the weight of the lyrics, the video plays it lighter. Meiburg gives a friendly banana slug the trip of a lifetime before returning it to the woods with a little extra lettuce to chew on. “The idea came to me on a walk in the woods, near the spot where I found our slug hero,” he says, calling it his favourite Shearwater video since Quiet Americans (from 2016’s Jet Plane and Oxbow).
The New World lands 31st July via the band’s own Polyborus label with Secretly Distribution. After six albums for Sub Pop and Matador, Shearwater crowdfunded and self-released this one, distilling its nine songs from four years of travel and fieldwork across London, Berlin, New York and their Texas base. The supporting cast — Shahzad Ismaily, Wieselman, qanunist Farouz Zriek, guitarist Leo Abrahams and percussionists from Mali’s Ngoni Ba among them — makes for ideal company on a globe-spanning record. Dan Duszynski engineered; Danny Reisch mixed in Los Angeles.