Jonathan Meiburg: Bird is the word
Eco-enlightened art rockers Shearwater are crafting new songs this week for their forthcoming album tentatively titled The Golden Archipelago, whose release date frontman Jonathan Meiburg guesses will be February or March 2010. The band traveled to the far-West Texas town of Tornillo, to record at Sonic Ranch, where the Yeah Yeah Yeahs recorded It’s Blitz, where Conor Oberst recorded Outer South, and where Ministry brought Al Jourgensen to kick heroine and record something, anything.
“I have been very impressed by the wildlife out here,” Meiburg, a noted birder, writes in an email, “particularly the tarantula hawk wasps–glossy blue-purple with rust-colored wings, among the largest in the world. They sound like giant beetles or small helicopters when they buzz by your head. Luckily they don’t seem aggressive. But they make me glad I am not a tarantula.”
If previous albums Palo Santo and Rook were glass menageries, The Golden Archipelago promises to be animals running wild.
“There are a lot more BIG-sounding drums on this record,” Meiburg writes, “and overall I’d say it’s woolier and spookier than Rook but also more extroverted. It sounds more like a band playing than some of our previous albums, I think, and it’s a bit more messy and exuberant.”
Some of the working song titles include “Meridian,” “Missing Islands,” “Landscape at Speed,” “Woolgathering,” and “Hidden Lakes.” Meiburg says orchestral flourishes will be added to the songs once their foundations are set. He also plans to use a field recording of the anthem of the people of Pikinni Atoll (otherwise known as Bikini Atoll), one of the South Pacific islands where U.S. nuclear tests were performed in the 1940s and 50s. The artwork for the album will be done by British duo Kahn & Selesnick, who did Rook.
Meiburg and crew have only a week at Sonic Ranch, so they’re not wasting any time. “We’re camped out doing as much recording as we can,” Meiburg writes, “before we fall asleep standing.”
“Rooks”
“Century Eyes”
