Rook (album)

Last updated
Rook
Shearwater rook.jpg
Studio album by
Shearwater
ReleasedJune 3, 2008
RecordedNovember 2007, Echo Lab, Argyle, Texas
Genre Indie rock
Length38:18
Language English
Label Matador Records
Producer Jonathan Meiburg
Shearwater chronology
Palo Santo
(2006)		Rook
(2008)		 The Golden Archipelago
(2010)

Rook is the fifth studio album by American indie rock band Shearwater. It was released on June 3, 2008, on the Matador Records label. The track "Rooks" was the first single from the album. The album was previewed on May 5, 2008 and May 29, 2008, at two special concerts in Manhattan and Austin, Texas. [1] The band toured in support of the album later in 2008. The album gained the band a spot on Entertainment Weekly's "Must List" on May 28. [2]

Indie rock is a genre of rock music that originated in the United States and United Kingdom in the 1970s. Originally used to describe independent record labels, the term became associated with the music they produced and was initially used interchangeably with alternative rock. As grunge and punk revival bands in the US and Britpop bands in the UK broke into the mainstream in the 1990s, it came to be used to identify those acts that retained an outsider and underground perspective. In the 2000s, as a result of changes in the music industry and the growing importance of the Internet, some indie rock acts began to enjoy commercial success, leading to questions about its meaningfulness as a term.

Shearwater (band) Indie rock band from Austin, Texas

Shearwater is an American indie rock band from Austin, Texas, led by multi-instrumentalist and lead singer Jonathan Meiburg, a singer-songwriter. The band's music is notable for its imagery based in nature, cerebral yet intimate melodic songs, as well as Meiburg's vocals.

Matador Records American record label

Matador Records is an independent record label, with a roster of mainly indie rock, but also punk rock, experimental rock, alternative rock, and electronic acts.

Contents

Shearwater released the album on both CD and vinyl, with the vinyl version having a bonus track called "North Col". [3] The cover art is by Kahn & Selesnick.

Nicholas Kahn and Richard Selesnick, both born in 1964, are a collaborative artist team who work primarily in the fields of photography and installation art. They specialize in fictitious histories set in both the past and future. The artists have participated in over 100 solo and group exhibitions worldwide and have work in over 20 collections including the Brooklyn Museum of Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Houston Museum of Fine Arts, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Smithsonian Institution. Portfolios of their work have appeared in fine art and photography magazines worldwide. They have lectured extensively at many institutions including Brown University, the Fogg Museum at Harvard University, the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, Princeton University, and San Francisco Art Institute.

Co-founder Jonathan Meiburg said he chose the title for the sound of the word and the fact that it has multiple meanings. [4] The theme of birds recurs frequently with the band, from their name to titles of songs and albums (for example, "Sing, Little Birdie" and Winged Life ). [4] Meiburg is an ornithologist. [4]

Jonathan Meiburg American musician

Jonathan Meiburg is an American musician and writer, best known as the lead singer and songwriter for Shearwater.

<i>Winged Life</i> 2004 studio album by Shearwater

Winged Life is Shearwater's third full-length album, released on March 16, 2004, on Misra Records.

Ornithology study of birds

Ornithology is a branch of zoology that concerns the study of birds. Several aspects of ornithology differ from related disciplines, due partly to the high visibility and the aesthetic appeal of birds.

Music

The album features harp, glockenspiel, woodwind and a hammer dulcimer among more conventional instruments such as guitar and piano. [3] [5] [6]

Harp class of musical instruments

The harp is a stringed musical instrument that has a number of individual strings running at an angle to its soundboard; the strings are plucked with the fingers. Harps have been known since antiquity in Asia, Africa and Europe, dating back at least as early as 3500 BC. The instrument had great popularity in Europe during the Middle Ages and Renaissance, where it evolved into a wide range of variants with new technologies, and was disseminated to Europe's colonies, finding particular popularity in Latin America. Although some ancient members of the harp family died out in the Near East and South Asia, descendants of early harps are still played in Myanmar and parts of Africa, and other defunct variants in Europe and Asia have been utilized by musicians in the modern era.

Glockenspiel percussion instrument composed of a set of tuned keys arranged in the fashion of the keyboard of a piano

A glockenspiel is a percussion instrument composed of a set of tuned keys arranged in the fashion of the keyboard of a piano. In this way, it is similar to the xylophone; however, the xylophone's bars are made of wood, while the glockenspiel's are metal plates or tubes, thus making it a metallophone. The glockenspiel, moreover, is usually smaller and higher in pitch.

Lyrics

The lyrics of Rook are mainly focused on themes of nature and fairy tale. [7]

Critics

Professional ratings
Aggregate scores
SourceRating
Metacritic 85/100 [8]
Review scores
SourceRating
AllMusic Star full.svgStar full.svgStar full.svgStar full.svgStar half.svg [9]
The Austin Chronicle Star full.svgStar full.svgStar full.svgStar full.svgStar empty.svg [10]
The A.V. Club A− [11]
Blender Star full.svgStar full.svgStar full.svgStar full.svgStar empty.svg [12]
MSN Music (Consumer Guide)C− [13]
Pitchfork 8.0/10 [6]
PopMatters 9/10 [14]
Slant Magazine Star full.svgStar full.svgStar full.svgStar full.svgStar empty.svg [15]
Spin Star full.svgStar full.svgStar full.svgStar half.svgStar empty.svg [16]
Uncut Star full.svgStar full.svgStar full.svgStar full.svgStar empty.svg [17]

The response from critics has been very positive. At Metacritic , which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album has received an average score of 85 - indicating "Universal Acclaim" - based on 20 reviews. [8] Pitchfork called it "impressive and uniformly gorgeous" and gave it an 8 out of 10 rating. [6]

Metacritic is a website that aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games, and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged. Metacritic was created by Jason Dietz, Marc Doyle, and Julie Doyle Roberts in 1999. The site provides an excerpt from each review and hyperlinks to its source. A color of green, yellow or red summarizes the critics' recommendations. It is regarded as the foremost online review aggregation site for the video game industry.

In statistics and applications of statistics, normalization can have a range of meanings. In the simplest cases, normalization of ratings means adjusting values measured on different scales to a notionally common scale, often prior to averaging. In more complicated cases, normalization may refer to more sophisticated adjustments where the intention is to bring the entire probability distributions of adjusted values into alignment. In the case of normalization of scores in educational assessment, there may be an intention to align distributions to a normal distribution. A different approach to normalization of probability distributions is quantile normalization, where the quantiles of the different measures are brought into alignment.

<i>Pitchfork</i> (website) online music magazine

Pitchfork is an American online magazine launched in 1995 by Ryan Schreiber, based in Chicago, Illinois, and owned by Condé Nast. Being developed during Schreiber's tenure in a record store at the time, the magazine developed a reputation for its extensive focus on independent music, but has since expanded to a variety of coverage on both indie and popular music.

Track listing

All tracks written by Jonathan Meiburg.

No.TitleLength
1."On the Death of the Waters"3:08
2."Rooks"3:21
3."Leviathan, Bound"2:52
4."Home Life"7:15
5."Lost Boys"2:24
6."Century Eyes"2:18
7."I Was a Cloud"5:12
8."South Col"2:35
9."The Snow Leopard"5:08
10."The Hunter's Star"4:00
Total length:38:18

Singles

  1. "Rooks" – 3:21
  2. "The Rainbow" (Talk Talk cover; recorded live at the Crocodile Cafe, Seattle) – 9:47
  1. "The Snow Leopard" – 5:02
  2. "So Bad" (Baby Dee cover) – 4:55
  3. "North Col" – 2:17
  4. "Henry Lee" (Nick Cave cover; recorded live from KUT) – 5:00
  5. "Rooks" (live from Radio K) – 3:14
  6. "I Was a Cloud" (live from Radio K) – 4:48
  7. "South Col" / "The Snow Leopard" (live at Florence Gould Hall, NYC) – 5:56

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References

  1. ↑ Shearwater (7 April 2008). "SW Presents Rook Live May 5th (NYC) & May 29th (Austin)". Shearwater Music. Archived from the original on 5 July 2008.
  2. ↑ Adrienne Day (28 May 2008). "The Must List: Shearwater's flights of fancy". Entertainment Weekly.
  3. 1 2 "Shearwater Move Their Rook Out". Chart Attack. 21 May 2008.
  4. 1 2 3 Matthew Solarski (27 March 2008). "Shearwater's Meiburg Talks Rook, Birding, Okkervil". Pitchfork Media. Archived from the original on 26 April 2008.
  5. ↑ Matthew Barnhart (2007-11-15). "Shearwater "Rook" recording, days. . . uhh. ." Archived from the original on 2008-04-29.
  6. 1 2 3 Crock, Jason (June 4, 2008). "Shearwater: Rook". Pitchfork . Retrieved June 4, 2008.
  7. ↑ "Shearwater — Rook" . Retrieved 20 September 2008.
  8. 1 2 "Reviews for Rook by Shearwater". Metacritic . Retrieved July 1, 2008.
  9. ↑ Monger, James Christopher. "Rook – Shearwater". AllMusic . Retrieved June 4, 2008.
  10. ↑ Haupt, Melanie (June 6, 2008). "Shearwater: Rook". The Austin Chronicle . Retrieved June 4, 2008.
  11. ↑ Gordon, Scott (June 2, 2008). "Shearwater: Rook". The A.V. Club . Retrieved June 4, 2008.
  12. ↑ Eells, Josh. "Shearwater: Rook". Blender . Archived from the original on June 8, 2008. Retrieved June 4, 2008.
  13. ↑ Christgau, Robert (April 2009). "Consumer Guide". MSN Music . Retrieved July 18, 2016.
  14. ↑ Loar, Christel (May 29, 2008). "Shearwater: Rook". PopMatters . Retrieved June 4, 2008.
  15. ↑ Clark, M. (July 2, 2008). "Shearwater: Rook". Slant Magazine . Retrieved July 18, 2016.
  16. ↑ Young, Jon (June 2008). "Shearwater: Rook". Spin . 24 (6): 116. Retrieved April 27, 2014.
  17. ↑ "Shearwater: Rook". Uncut (135): 98. August 2008.
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