It’s been six years since Shearwater’s last album, Jet Plane And Oxbow, though in that time the project’s leader Jonathan Melberg teamed up with Cross Record’s Emily Cross and Dan Duszynski for the new band Loma. But today Meiberg is back with news of a new Shearwater album called The Great Awakening, and he’s continuing to work with his Loma mates: Duszynski produced the album, and Cross directed the music video for its lead single, the gentle and gliding “Xenarthran.” Here’s Meiburg on the track and video:
Xenarthrans are the ‘strange-jointed’ mammals, which mostly live in South America: armadillos, anteaters, and sloths. Only one species of armadillo has wandered up to the southern U.S., and while we were recording ‘The Great Awakening’ in Texas, I often saw them scurrying dimly through fields at dusk or snuffling in the mud after a rainstorm, and I couldn’t help admiring them. They’d walked thousands of miles on their wispy little feet, long noses to the ground, trundling into alien landscapes filled with unfamiliar dangers. This song, and Emily’s eerie video, aren’t about armadillos, exactly—but they are about making your way through the dark spaces of a menacing but still very beautiful world. The roaring sounds near the end are howler monkeys I recorded in Guyana.
Watch and listen below.
TRACKLIST:
01 “Highgate”
02 “No Reason”
03 “Xenarthran”
04 “Laguna Seca”
05 “Everyone You Touch”
06 “Empty Orchestra”
07 “Milkweed”
08 “Detritivore”
09 “Aqaba”
10 “There Goes The Sun”
11 “Wind Is Love”
The Great Awakening is out 6/10 via the band’s own Polyborus. Pre-order it here
21