It’s fitting that Shearwater conceived their latest album, The Golden Archipelago, as an escape fantasy about life on an isolated island, considering how insular the group has become. Since their split from their sister band Okkervil River a half decade ago, the group has honed an entirely singular sound, forging grand nature calls around oceanic melodies, elemental percussion and the broken choirboy cries of leader Jonathan Meiburg. With each new release, Shearwater seems further removed from the rest of the world, recording as if the only new music they’ve been exposed to is their own.
That's not necessarily a good thing anymore. I’m reluctant to criticize any band this original, this fully realized, for repeating themselves, but The Golden Archipelago is stylistically indistinguishable from the band’s 2008 effort, Rooks, which itself clung too tightly to 2006’s glorious Palo Santo. The Golden Archipelago suffers for the familiarity. The first time you hear blossoming strings rise around Meiburg’s righteous piano or one of his lovely ballads erupt into a carnal squall, the hairs on your neck stand in awe, but after three albums, these troupes have become predictable. On Palo Santo, Meiburg created a facile new sound predicated on an element of surprise. Now it seems he’s run out of surprises.
