Jonathan Meiburg has never made any secret for his fascination for ornithology. Judging by the title of Shearwater’s latest record, Animal Life, it would appear Meiburg has expanded his interest into the broader animal kingdom; certainly, the album’s charged title track suggests Meiburg has cast his eye into wider metaphorical territory to find meaning.
On Breaking The Yearlings, it’s horse training that provides the rhetorical flourish to fill out the Echo and the Bunnymen-meets-Killing Joke soundtrack; Insolence is a tale of metamorphosis-level quality, its own reference point the chrysalis within which the song’s subject struggles to escape.
But lest it be thought that Shearwater is a one-trick pony, Meiburg jumps in the car for Immaculate and tears down the road with Paul Weller riding shotgun; Pushing The River is a pyrrhic triumph of humanity over nature, fuelled by a dextrous drum beat, and culminating in a feedback-stained psychedelic freak-out that expands your mind and fucks with your brain. Balance that with Shearwater’s quieter excursions – Open Your Houses (Basilisk), Run the Banner Down, Believing Makes It Easy – and you’re left with an album that traverses far-reaching geographical and zoological territory.
There are those who’ll say – with some justification, albeit couched in ideologically purist terms – that the predominant theme in humanity’s relationship with God’s creatures has been one of exploitation. Shearwater reminded us that the animal kingdom should be the source of artistic inspiration.
BY PATRICK EMERY
Best Track: Pushing Back the River
If You Like These, You’ll Like This: KILLING JOKE, ECHO AND THE BUNNYMEN
In A Word: Zoological
