Shearwater – “Aqaba”

Fun fact: Jonathan Melberg’s dramatic art-rock project Shearwater was the first band ever to land two different LPs in Stereogum’s Album Of The Week column. Right now, Meiburg is preparing to release the first new Shearwater album in six years, following up 2016’s Jet Plane And Oxbow with the new LP The Great Awakening. We’ve already shared first single “Xenarthran,” and now Meiburg has also shared a new song called “Aqaba.”

“Aqaba” is a slow meditation about dust and water, and it’s got Meiburg’s high, keening, otherworldly voice over a tender, minimal piano. According to a press release, the song also has “what might be the first-ever solo by a Guayanese toucan.” Emily Lee, Meiburg’s bandmate in both Shearwater and the side-project trio Loma, directed the “Aqaba” video, a soft-focus study in skies and in the face of a young woman dancing around a stone room.

In a press release, Meiburg describes the song:

“Aqaba,” like the rest of The Great Awakening, is a song a younger version of me couldn’t have written, and the last one we recorded for the album. You could read it a few different ways, but to me it’s a love song, or a song about the experience of love — the thrilling, terrifying feeling that you’re being cracked like an egg.

Check it out below.

The Great Awakening is out 6/10 on the band’s own Polyborus imprint. Pre-order it here.