Jonathan Meiburg's work as an ornithology grad student is mentioned in almost every write-up of his band Shearwater, and by naming the group after a species of aquatic bird and by titling his previous album Winged Life, he brought that on himself. And like any good scientist-- especially any good biologist-- Meiburg is obsessed with the particulars of life and death as well as the precarious border between them.
The same can be said of his musical partner, Will Sheff, who acts the Lennon to Meiburg's McCartney. Both are the principles in Okkervil River as well as Shearwater, and both specialize in a brand of haunted, folksy, story-oriented rock that falls somewhere between the Shins' upbeat observations and Pinetop Seven's eerie Americana. While Sheff seems to be the more prolific of the pair, writing almost all of Okkervil River's material and even two of the five songs on Shearwater's new Thieves EP, Meiburg proves his match and his complement.
Meiburg's "Mountain Laurel" is a bracing banjo stomp, with Scott Danbom's abrasive fiddle adding palpable tension to Meiburg's ruminations on the failings of the human body. Opener "I Can't Wait" begins with a plaintive guitar strum, then gradually builds to a caterwauling climax before returning again to that hushed acoustic guitar theme. "There's Bark Where You Were Breathing" creeps along on a quietly sung melody that at times is barely audible, as if the notes travel by breeze.
Even so, it's Sheff's "Near the Garden" that proves to be the EP's best track and perhaps the most affecting song either of them has written. Set at the funeral of a friend, the song tries to locate some meaning in death, but finds nothing instructive or satisfying. "You used to be a live body," Sheff sings (or it could be "You used to be alive, body"), "then you died." He knows that the corpse in the casket is not the person he knew, just the empty casing of a snuffed life, and on the plane ride home, he laments how much life is inescapably wasted: "The movie on the plane says life is for the living, as I sit slowly living, paralyzed with boredom."
It's a stark, unsentimental moment in an EP-- as well as in an ongoing collaboration-- that plumbs the mysteries of mortality without resorting to comforting platitudes or naive proclamations. Instead, Meiburg and Sheff both sound scientific, but never cold or clinical.
