Following up on last year’s studio LP Animal Joy, Texas indie group Shearwater are set to release a new album, Fellow Travelers, featuring covers of bands they’ve toured with over the years, which will be out on November 25 through Sub Pop.
Among the band’s reworkings are cuts from St Vincent, Sharon Van Etten, Xiu Xiu and Folk Implosion and guest appearances from covered artists, including Wye Oak and Clinic, on the premise that they couldn’t play on their own song, as well as the inclusion of some field recordings Shearwater main man Jonathan Meiburg made on his trip to study birds of prey on the Falkland Islands (have a read of the excellent piece he wrote about his experience here).
Says Meiburg about the album: "Fellow Travelers wasn’t supposed to be a full-length record, so I’m a little surprised to admit that it’s my favourite Shearwater album so far. Somehow it slipped under the door.
"It was meant to be a small thing, maybe a home-recorded EP, to release between Animal Joy and the next full-length (for which we’re in the studio right now). But it took on a life of its own. Re-imagining and renovating songs by the bands we’ve toured with was like leafing through a scrapbook, and brought back the highs and lows of a decade of touring, from dives in Oklahoma and squats in Slovenia to the Fillmore West, the Bataclán and the MGM Grand (ask me about that one sometime)."
Ahead of the album’s release, here’s the its closing track, the band’s cover of a track by fellow Texas crew The Baptist Generals, featuring the aforementioned guest appearance by Clinic – Meiburg says of the recording: "Clinic’s contribution to this song was the biggest surprise of the album, to me. I sent the acoustic guitar track, a scratch vocal and basic drums over to them via e-mail, and they returned the song festooned with all the trademark Clinic sounds; the bouncy bass and drum machine, the radio-wave synth effects, the overdriven combo organ". Have a listen below:
