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Shearwater began when after having only known each other for a week.
Will Sheff from Okkervil River and Jonathan Meiburg from Kingfisher decided
to make an album together. Starting out only with the idea that they wanted
the album to be called The Dissolving Room, the two began co-writing songs,
often by batting ideas back and forth over e-mail and solidifying them in
person at album rehearsals. With the help of Jonathan’s wife Kim on string
bass and some friends who added parts for violin, pedal steel, and cello,
they made a record they liked so much that they decided to make Shearwater
a permanent entity, adding Thor (Swans, Lisa Germano), a drummer / vibraphonist,
to the band to fill out the sound.
Intended as a late-night album in the vein of Drake’s Pink Moon, The Dissolving
Room also echoes Leonard Cohen as well as indie songwriters like Belle and
Sebastian, Smog’s Bill Callahan, and Elliott Smith. It showcases the songwriting
talents of both Sheff (whose work with Okkervil River has been compared
by reviewers to Will Oldham, the Magnetic Fields, and Lee Hazlewood) and
Meiburg (who, with |
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his distinctive falsetto, echoes Jeff Buckley and Thom Yorke) in terse,
intimate songs about fall, hospitals, hummingbirds, and true crime.
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