Shearwater Live @ Primavera Festival '09

This was the second time in less than a month that I had the acutely emotional experience of hearing Shearwater play songs from Rook and Palo Santo, interspersed with a handful of new songs (on the strength of which I am expecting the new record, if there is one in the works, to be just as stunning as their two better known LP's).

Before I go into detail about their appearance at Primavera I would like to point out to those that have heard their music, and those that haven't, that their music took a long time to grow on me. I almost bought Palo Santo three times, missing out when I finally decided to because Matador were preparing an expanded re-issue. By the time it came out I had forgotten what had drawn me to their music, listening through the record shop's headphones a year before.

When Rook came out my indifference remained. It was only because the owner of the record shop (on which I wrote a piece, which you can read HERE) repeatedly told me that I must listen to Rook that I started to try. While working at the shop I could never get past the first song, 'On The Death of the Waters'. I would turn it up loud so I could hear the nuances, but then the crescendo would blast out through the shop, scaring the more timid customers and prompting me to change it. Eventually I knew I had to buy a copy, because I was intrigued with the music in a way which had never happened before. It still took a dozen listens for it to click, but it did just that, and the bond has only grown stronger in the six months since.

I got to the Pitchfork stage a half hour before they were due to begin. At the time there were only a few people milling around, but I was glad to have waited when the covered court in which the stage is placed filled out rapidly. The band eschewed common set structures, in favour of an oscillating dynamic that suits their songs. Songs which contain many deftly woven facets and feelings within their short duration alone. It would not be possible for the band to build to some intensifying conclusion, as they do not write songs which can be charted as points on a simple scale.

They drew the slack rays of the evening sun taught, creating a highly charged atmosphere from the outset which they plucked and manipulated in a way which had me dancing one minute and close to tears the next. I didn't feel as if they were rushing me through a display of their ability as a band of multi-instrumentalists; everything unfolded at a natural pace, diverse beauty and pain threaded together seamlessly, as old growth and new is entwined in ancient forest. As they played it felt as though the experience took place outside of time, there was not a single moment when I was aware of being me in the manner which compulsively dominates my waking thoughts.

This is the best way I can explain their set for you, though reading these renderings of rather intangible experiences might be rather cumbersome at best, all I wish to do is explain how much meaning their songs have in my life at this time. Beyond these elusive gestures I can concretely say that they give one of the finest, musically integrated performance of any band I have ever seen. They seem to be entirely aware of the set list for the show, and every member moves to the appropriate instrument unhurried, but just in time. There are no obvious cues, either Meiburg or Thor Harris begin most of the songs, safe in the knowledge that the other humans up there with them know, and love, what they will contribute to the song.

I have a limited memory of exactly which songs they played. I remember that 'South Col' led me through a geological loneliness, that of a sun sinking the world inexorably into darkness, to the cold, still harbour of 'The Snow Leopard' and the phosphorescence therein. Where Meiburg sings "I've had enough, wasting my body, my life. I've come away, come away, from the shallows". I remember Thor Harris's tender trills on his home made dulcimer, the spine of 'Leviathan Bound'. I think they played 'On the Death of the Waters' because I feel like I heard the trumpet part which lends so much brightness to the burst of noise. I am sure I heard the haunting roll of the piano on the hard stone of 'Home Life' but I can't be sure that they played it.

It's all so mixed up in the passionate calm that I was left with that it seems unnecessary to distinguish what was what, and who was who. The vivid, breathing life I see amongst and within things, the life that keeps me going, is so distinctly present in their music that it feels ridiculous to try and justify such a feeling with detail. It is still with me as I write this three days later, on the train home.

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