Shearwater will release their Sub Pop debut Animal Joy on the 13th February, 2012 . To celebrate the outfit have released set of live recordings from the Island Arc performance in January , where they played Palo Santo, Rook, and The Golden Archipelago back-to-back. You can actually hear us blow a breaker at the end of “Hail, Mary”.
The second, Why I Love My Home (songs for Charles Burchfield) is a pair of long, experimental songs written and performed by JM for the Whitney Museum’s exhibit of Burchfield’s art. These are studio versions of the songs, recorded by Danny Reisch, who’ll be working with Shearwater on our new full-length. These songs will be pressed on beautiful 12″ vinyl next year as part of Graveface Records’ subscription-only charity singles compilation.
Animal Joy was produced and recorded by Danny Reisch in Austin, Texas, and mixed by Peter Katis (The National, Interpol, Jonsi, Frightened Rabbit) in Bridgeport, Connecticut; sessions took place through most of 2011. The album was mastered by Greg Calbi in NYC. Principal players were Jonathan Meiburg (vocals, guitar, and piano), Kimberly Burke (upright and electric bass) and Thor Harris (drums)—all members of Shearwater since 1999—along with guest performers Andy Stack (of Wye Oak) on guitar, keyboard, and saxophone, Scott Brackett on keyboards, Cully Symington on additional drums, Sam Lipman on clarinet, and Elaine Barber on harp. No strings or glockenspiels were touched during the making of this album.
The band will embark on a 13 date North American tour opening for Sharon Van Etten beginning on 2 February and will be heading to Europe in April.
