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Track Listings
| 1. Meridian |
| 2. Black Eyes |
| 3. Landscape at Speed |
| 4. Hidden Lakes |
| 5. Corridors |
| 6. God Made Me |
| 7. Runners of the Sun |
| 8. Castaways |
| 9. An Insular Life |
| 10. Uniforms |
| 11. Missing Islands |
Product Description
Review
Numerous acts have plied similar waters in recent years (fine offerings from Bowerbirds, Midlake and Andrew Bird spring to mind), but with The Golden Archipelago, Shearwater really go for broke – a limited run of Meiburg-assembled ‘dossiers’ were even made available, illuminating its central themes via his studies. These themes constitute far more than just a jumping-off point for the group: they’re intrinsic to the record as a whole. Indeed, it’s not the band that greet you upon first listen, but the defiant strains of Bikini Atoll’s national anthem, sung by exiled Bikinians on their adopted isle of Kili.
The band enters with the bare, lilting swell of Meridian. Meiburg’s vocals lapse into such aching falsetto that he could literally be singing the Idiot’s Guide to Value Investing and you’d still root for him; that he’s relaying a tale informed by his grandfather’s wartime experiences in the South Pacific makes it all the more poignant. In contrast, Black Eyes is a jarring, serrated affair, which sees him hollering his lyrics over a magnificent racket. When they want to be – like on the dissonant swirl of Corridors, or the climactic breaks of God Made Me – Shearwater are an exceptionally noisy band, propelled by a staggering range of percussive elements courtesy of drummer Thor Harris. For the most part, however, they revel in dreamy, capacious arrangements (Talk Talk’s Spirit of Eden is a long-cited touchstone), and The Golden Archipelago eases into a leisurely second half before bowing out with Missing Islands, where Meiburg’s vocals take the spotlight against plaintive ivories to show-stopping effect.
There’s no getting round it: The Golden Archipelago is a profoundly beautiful record. Replete with moments of jubilance and tranquillity, cataclysm and contemplation, it feels like the successful culmination of everything the band have been aiming towards over their career to date. An assured, often fascinating and eminently listenable set, it’s less an album, more a bona fide artefact. --James Skinner
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Product Description
Customer Reviews
I really like the way that this music builds. I must admit a fondness for lo-fi and this is hardly that. But the layering and production of this is lovely. The songs and the music are designed for precision engineering rather than being thrown out off the cuff. But if you want your music multi-layered and highly engineered it doesn't get much better than this. This is music that's been thought through - a lot. I see other reviewers have written about how this comes together so well as an album and I agree wholeheartedly. very well thought through. I know it's a cliche but there really are no 'filler' tracks here. Beautifully produced and Meiburg's voice hangs the songs together fabulously.
It's a shame in a way that this will no doubt be largely ignored by the music-buying public. A shame but give it a try yourself, well worth it.
Stand out track - 'Hidden Lake' (9/10)
The restlessness of the music reflects the ocean and the sky, combining with the soaring vocals of Jonathan Meiburg in songs varying between gentle and reflective and stirringly angry result in what must be for me the album of 2010 and that is against some quite very impressive opposition.
The 10 folk before me have said it all, but I just had to add my voice to approval and appreciation of this stunning work.
I've intended in other instances to collect other works of bands new to me, in this case it will not be just a back-burner sort of aim, but a firm resolve. Excellent!
I purchased Rook (the previous Shearwater album) solely on account of an impressive score on Metacritic (not an infallible method of selection as i have found out on a number of occasions)and, after several listens, i realised that it was not only the best album of the year of its release (2008), but for me one of the best albums of that decade-whatever that decade was called....
I bought and received The Golden Archipelago resigned to the fact it would be a massive let down, playing it almost as an after thought. The first playing of it appeared to confirm my doubts, nothing much to get excited about. The next day i played it in the car a couple of times, a couple of tracks seemed to be Ok. I got home and played it some more. You can see where this is going- after about five listens to the album in full i became aware that this was in fact an absolute masterpiece, i can only liken it to Radioheads In Rainbows and Antics by Interpol as an album that slowly but surely reveals itself as a work of genius, rewarding the listener who sticks with it with the greatest of prizes-a record that will grace their sound systems for years to come.
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