Shearwater: “Palo Santo”

Filed under: Music Reviews   

(Misra Records)

Having tossed their folk ideas under the bus, Shearwater’s into Talk Talk these days as you may have heard, but it’s not quite that simple; there’s an altie slant to the stuff that’s indicative of a Yo La Tengo CD-buying binge (”La Dame et la Licorne”) and a delving into somebody’s old vinyl collection that uncovered some cobwebby Supertramp (”Red Sea, Black Sea”). “White Waves” evidences a stolid confidence in their riffing, busted-amp-tube Brian Jonestown non sequiturs adding to some thankfully drawn out skag-haze that’s a slo-mo mutation of “19th Nervous Breakdown.” While we’re there, fuzz (as well as hints of bent-circuitry) is a major part of the plan now, as if they’d come back from some sort of week-long Pitchfork-fest and decided that the Melvins were God, and Jonathan Meiburg’s voice has been working out on a Jeff Buckley-meets-Billy Joel bag, so it’s now even more nerve-wracking, like a box of broken glass shaken by an orangutan.

Posted on April 5th, 2007.

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