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Track List
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If you’ve visited Shearwater’s website over the last couple of months, you’ll have been greeted by an arresting, scratchily-filmed series of images – of mist over mountains, damaged flags and roiling sea-waters; of travel journals and captains’ logs, bloodied bird carcasses and satellite grabs. It’s all part of the story.
See, The Golden Archipelago is Shearwater’s most ‘visual’ project yet. While their records have always been packaged in beautiful cases illustrated by watercolours or drawings of various species (frontman Jonathan Meiburg is a well-documented bird-watcher and voyager), for this album they went the extra mile. Meiburg and designer Mark Ohe created several ‘Golden Dossiers’, visual guides to the music comprised of images and manuscripts collected by the singer on his travels to various islands and other remote locations. Each dossier is an eerie scrapbook of snatched history, of black and white photos, of hastily-written diaries and long-forgotten legends.
You've got to admire Shearwater. To so many bands the notion of songwriting consists largely of stroking their chins for a couple of hours before scrawling down a few rhyming couplets about the birds they fancy. In stark relief, birdwatcher Jonathan Meiburg likes to prepare. Thoroughly.
For instance, he'll undertake a Darwinian quest to visit many of the world's most far-flung islands, paying close attention to their physical geography, human geography, history, weather, and wildlife, all in order to inform the writing and recording of the new Shearwater album, The Golden Archipelago.
Complete Discography