Animal Joy

Shearwater return with yet another dazzling LP, “Animal Joy”, that achieves nothing but what has come to be expected of the band since their 2001 debut album “The Dissolving Room”. Now, 11 years later, the American indie-rock group return with an album far more optimistic than anything we have ever heard from them before. It is perhaps this optimism and lighter sound that is appealing, but equally, it may be what the Shearwater fan will disapprove of – few singers can deliver a loaded line or two with such power and intensity as Jonathan Meiburg.

Originally a side-projected of Okkervil River members Meiburg and Will Sheff, the ambition was to create a different (quieter) type of music than that of Okkervil. This ambition seems to have faltered as Shearwater’s signature sound, in their later work, is replaced by more upbeat pieces. However, when comparing the two bands, despite them having seemingly discarded their initial ambitions, the initial origins of sound and tone are evident, and whatever difference it is they are striving for is exercised with consistent brilliance.

“Animal Joy” has it all: the perfect balance between the upbeat and downbeat tracks, as well as the noticeable shift in tone halfway through the album, where Shearwater begin to work their way back to the sound that was present in previous albums “Rook” (2008) and “The Golden Archipelago” (2010).

If there is one thing their seventh studio-album lacks, it is a song like “Black Eyes” (The Golden Archipelago), “Leviathan”, or “Rooks”, (both from Rook), where Meiburg’s delicate voice musters all the power that is otherwise absent, to deliver only a few lines, painfully and passionately loaded with anguish and despair, seducing us, inviting us to feel what he feels.

However, equally intricate in structure, this album does not fail to impress, as it shows a different side of the band. It is indicative of their ambition to step out of the shadow cast by Okkervil River.

It may be said that this is so far one of the best LPs of 2012, and once more, a manifestation of Shearwater’s ability and potential to reach out to the world and amaze.

**MP3:** ‘You as You Were’
**Similar to:** Okkervil River, The Besnard Lakes