Shearwater, Palo Santo

reviewed by dave heaton

That Shearwater's staid, melancholic country music has received a dramatic makeoever for Palo Santo is apparent right from the start, as singer Jonathan Meiburg sings sweet nothings in the high register of opera, or at least of Jeff Buckley, over piano before breaking harshly into a near-scream, and then back to a sad gentle croon, while an eerie mood sneaks up from the background. This opening slowly forms into the spellbinding ballad "La Dame et la Licorne" – spellbinding both because of the way Meiburg is suddenly inging like some strange hybrid of both father and son Buckley, and because of the words painting some engimatic but intriguing scene of a struggle at the border, and because of the crystal-clear, haunted array of piano and strings that surrounds him, with odd static noises at the end.

Palo Santo is a concept album with no clear concept, lyrically, though there's ample references to environmental devastation, to loss, to depression. Musically the concept is expansion, atmosphere, and piercing moments of surprise, where Meiburg's voice shoots upward or the music darts forward like a dagger.

There's moments of absolute fragility, and they almost always give way to moments of sheer terror. Shearwater has given their generally sullen country-rock a feeling of absolute adventure, where you're never quite sure where the music is headed or what feelings it's going to stir up. In this way, they're on some glorious Radiohead kind of trip, yet the general mood of their songs hasn't changed quite as drastically as the style and musical palette have. Even when songs seem like they could have fit right in, musically, with previous releases, they're still somehow sharper, more refined, and more powerful.

It'd be ridiculous to describe this music in any way as "country rock", or either one of those two words, actually. "Art folk" is better, if only because "art" has become some kind of catch-all descriptor writers turn to when the music is strange and challenging, and therefore doesn't fit neatly into a category. But there's also absolute rock moments, where big guitar chords coming crashing through, straight out of a '70s rock anthem. And there's particularly quiet, sensitive pop moments as well.

Palo Santo is undeniably dramatic, lifting and falling in exaggerated ways. Yet ultimately I find it much more emotionally engaging than their previous albums. They've definitely taken a purposeful step out of the Okkervil River shadow – this is the first Shearwater album that Meiburg's Okkervil River bandmate Will Sheff didn't appear on, or write songs for. But in shaking off the taglines they've been previously stuck with, they've also made their music richer and much more thrilling.

{www.misrarecords.com, www.jound.com/shearwater}