The wholeness of Shearwater’s aesthetic is an admirable quality, and one that lets people know right off the bat if the band's “not their thing.” Even before you hear Jonathan Meiburg’s operatic vocals, the ornate, orchestral arrangements give you the suspicion that his concerns are birds, snow leopards, horses, and golden archipelagos. This makes a Shearwater covers album an intriguing proposition and also a risky one: can anyone else’s songwriting survive in these conditions? So it’s even more interesting that this collection is called Fellow Travelers; sure, it’s taken from Trotsky, but all the same, it lets you know who Shearwater see as not only their role models, but also their peers. Coldplay and St. Vincent? Sure. Xiu Xiu? Well, Meiburg has collaborated with Jamie Stewart in Blue Water White Death. Folk Implosion? Um.
But any discussion of Fellow Travelers needs to begin with “I Luv The Valley OH!” It’s not only the definitive Xiu Xiu because it’s the best song Jamie Stewart has written. It’s also a song that couldn’t be written or performed by anyone besides Jamie Stewart, at least not effectively. Even beyond the music itself, a perverse mocking of glimmering, hopeful alt-rock, the vocals are sui generis Xiu Xiu where you can’t tell if it’s a legitimate cry for help or Stewart prank calling the suicide hotline. If you don’t have his track record, it’s a lot tougher to pull off lines like “there’s a razor, make a million billion threats” and “my behind is a beehive/ there's a buzz in my backside,” while slipping into incorrect French. Shearwater’s take is over-the-top in its own way—it just turns “I Luv The Valley OH!” into a goddamn stadium anthem with swooping bass and a constant, reverbed kick drum replacing the erratic, mortar rounds that punctuated the original. Sheared and watered down, the palpable danger of Stewart’s performance is replaced with cocksure pomp—while the exclamatory cry of the title in the original is one of the most harrowing, cathartic yells ever caught on tape, Meiburg’s haughty, oratorial style makes it sound like high school Shakespeare or just any old “oh”. I think Meiburg’s heart is in the right place here, but you take Jamie Stewart out of “I Luv The Valley OH!” and you’re just left with a song that has a nice melody.
As it turns out, Shearwater can somehow take the edge off a Coldplay song as well. “Hurts Like Heaven” was indicative of Coldplay’s pure-pop ambitions on Mylo Xyloto, giving Chris Martin’s vocals Autotune tweaks and the rhythm section a blinding sheen. Here, it’s a pretty, weightless piano ballad that’s closer to the stereotyped "Coldplay" that gets played for cheap laughs in major motion pictures. On the other hand, St. Vincent’s “Cheerleader” and Folk Implosion’s “Natural One” are given straight, respectful covers, but once again make a great case for the necessity of character. “Cheerleader” loses its lyrical bite without the context Annie Clark had created throughout her body of work, and while “Natural One” was included in the most absurdly grim movie about teenage sex ever made, Lou Barlow managed to capture the occasional fumbling and pure lust behind it all. A key line is “when mama’s not around, there’s no telling what we’ll do when we’re free.” Meiburg’s imperious vocals can evoke the mating rituals of majestic condors, but not that.
When Shearwater don’t have to compete with an original's familiarity or strong personality, Fellow Travelers succeeds by doing a service for overlooked artists. In its original form, David Thomas Broughton’s “Ambiguity” was the sort of thing that typically becomes an artist-beloved lost treasure, a gut-wrenching sentiment wrapped up in a six-minute, static-laced avant-folk song. It benefits from Shearwater’s immaculate, harp-led arrangement, which foregrounds the melody and lyrics. The same goes for Baptist Generals’ “Fucked Up Life”; Shearwater’s fellow Dentonites list a litany of relatable punishments and while it’s not that far off in subject matter from “I Luv The Valley OH!”, Meiburg’s performance is much more suited to the source material.
Most revelatory of all is “Tomorrow”. It was the second single from Clinic’s 2008 LP Do It!, which found the band well into a stage of their career that Shearwater is just entering: where you’re perceived to have a “thing” and that thing is kinda taken for granted. If you didn’t recognize “Tomorrow”, it’s much easier to spot its Clinic tics after the fact—the circular bassline, the pinch melody. The cover here gives a mutual benefit, opening up Shearwater’s sound in subtle ways while putting a focus on Ade Blackburn’s actual songwriting acumen, which is rarely given a close reading.
Shearwater never sound like a band that does things for the hell of it, though you can understand how they’d benefit from Fellow Travelers regardless of the outcome. Last year's Animal Joy showed a band trying to let loose, just a little, even if they can’t truly sound like anyone else as long as Meiburg is at the lead. But it did at least show the group trying to rock, trying to groove. Fellow Travelers can be seen as Shearwater showing their scratch work, and while great cover albums can be a revelation or an embarrassment, most end up right around here: which is to say, admirable and flawed. Few things can be tougher for an artist than to purely express themselves. Expressing what they like about another artist is often one of them.
