Week 6: Jet Plane and Oxbow by Shearwater
1:41 PM
This week I'll be listening to Shearwater's new album Jet Plane and Oxbow.
I initially started listening to DIIV's new album Is The Is Are but I had to stop because:
1. The album name pissed me off (seriously, why do bands insist on make themselves so hard to Google?)
2. I found out the front man is the same guy from Beach Fossils
3. I love dream pop, but the dark tone, washed out guitars and the fact that all 17 tracks started bleeding together made me ever more depressed than I usually am mid-winter.
I realized that if I wanted to make it to April I needed something that was going to pick me up, and an entire album dedicated to a journey with Heroin addiction wasn't going to do that for me.
I will admit, I was excited when I saw there was a track called Valentine, which would be a cutesy, appropriate choice for this week. Then I realized that his Valentine is probably Heroin.
Shearwater are another amazing group birthed of Austin's weirdness. According to "the internet" they've been together since 1999, but I had really only heard about them since they signed to SubPop in 2012 (and even still, this is the first album of theirs that I've actually listened to). Jet Plane and Oxbow has been pulling some solid reviews from critics and lay-people a like, so I decided I would check it out.
I started with the music video for their track "Quiet Americans" and I'm a convert already.
It throws me back to listening to The Thompson Twins and 80's New Wave hits with my dad, but with more energy and more intrigue.
I hope I can get to the rest of the album, because I'm stuck looping :40 to 1:15 over and over.
Or lying alone in the eastern light
Sleeping in the morning hours, the only sound
From the lantern covered hills, the only light
From the day yet to begin, the only sign
Of the guns in silhouette
The only sound, the only light
Only, Only!
While I was riding my "Quiet Americans" high, I decided I would do some poking around on Youtube to see how Shearwater sounded live, and actually gasped and swooned like I was in Downton Abbey when I found this video.
I feel like the stars are aligning when one of my favorite song-writers covers one of my favorite songs. I'm not even mad that I'm home with the flu anymore. This is going to be a good week.
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