The Great Awakening. Shearwater

From travelling through Latin America to track and record birds, captured in Jonathan Maiburg's first books, 'A Most Remarkable Creature: The Hidden Life' and 'Epic Journey of the World's Smartest Birds of Prey', to Shearwater's first record in six years, is a smaller step than may seem at first glance. Meiburg brought not so much the silence as the majestic surroundings of the forest to The Great Awakening. Gone is the rock, gone are the prominent guitars, and prominent instruments in general, all replaced by the great surroundings of music, like a whole, massive work of music. The wide spaces in the sound mix, creating a special layer of attention for all that is in that mix.

It makes The Great Awakening a majestic album, one in which everything is huge, while obtrusiveness is all but banned from the music. If anything, the music is spellbinding, mesmerising. Anyone not caught by the music somewhere, by the furthest stretch, in the second song, is immune to Shearwater's music.

In 2016 'Jet Plane And Oxbow' was released. After giving the album a very positive review, I immediately bought the LP at the time but also noticed the album sort of fell out of grace after a while. The album did not stick. This was no real surprise, I thought, as the albums before it never got to that (top level) stage even. This resulted in me not sitting in the front row for a new Shearwater release. And here is The Great Awakening and I'm listening to it for I can't recall how many times.

Yes, this is a "soft" album. Yet, so many things are happening. You can find so many sounds on the album, isolated pieces of music, snippets from one instrument or another, soft tribal rhythms. All with one common denominator, Jonathan Meiburg's voice up front, part of the music, but sing-whispering his lyrics straight at you. Thus an integral co-creator of the atmosphere of the album, part of the mysterious music, adding to the experience I am already intensely undergoing.

Meiburg made the album together with co-producer Dan Duszynski of Loma. (To make things more confusing, the are both in Loma, together with Emily Cross and recorded two albums since 2016.) Some older Shearwater band mates from the past came by to deliver contributions. The result is a beautiful album, that is able to modestly rock, with the relatively busy and contradictorily called 'Empty Orchestra'. The song is an outlier though, while still fitting the wide sounds created by keyboards/synths. ELO without the pop and rock combination in combination, with a modern take on the hit songs of U2 and Simple Minds of the mid 80s. Expect more restful moments and bird song next.

There's more than enough to enjoy on The Great Awakening and to discover. Now I will just have to be patient and discover how the album fares a few months from now. In the mean time, do not hesitate to try the album for your self. Do not let me keep you up.

Wout de Natris

You can listen to and order The Great Awakening here:

https://shearwater.bandcamp.com/album/the-great-awakening-2022