The last time Jonathan Meiburg wrote original music for his longtime art-rock outfit Shearwater, he embraced a stripped-down sound, presented on 2012’s Animal Joy with the telling liner-notes disclaimer that "no strings or glockenspiels were touched during the making of this album." Back then, Meiburg was nursing a broken heart, and emoted in a rawer manner than in his band's grandiose "Island Arc" trilogy comprised of 2006's Palo Santo, 2008's Rook, and 2010's The Golden Archipelago. Animal Joy hinted at an intimacy hidden behind the "Game of Thrones" magnificence of the band’s earlier work. What’s more, punching up the influences of early Pulp and Laughing Stock-era Talk Talk helped bring a sense of old-fashioned romantic sweep to the Sub Pop label for the first time since Jeremy Enigk’s Return of the Frog Queen.
Jet Plane and Oxbow marks Shearwater’s second full-length of original material for the veteran Seattle imprint, following a collection of covers in 2013 called Fellow Travelers that featured versions of songs by such contemporaries as Coldplay, St. Vincent, Xiu Xiu, Folk Implosion, and intrepid labelmates the Baptist Generals. Following up on the lead suggested by Animal Joy, Meiburg cuts closer to rock'n'roll than anything this band has ever made. The glockenspiels are back (well, it's a dulcimer this time, actually), but they are manned by former Redd Kross drummer Brian Reitzell, who has spent the last two decades as a music supervisor and film composers, scoring hit films like Lost in Translation, Friday Night Lights, and The Bling Ring in addition to being a de facto third member of Air. Reitzell's arsenal of keyboards, percussion, and various hammered string instruments gives Shearwater the epic 70mm feel Meiburg always seems to be aiming for; only this time, he’s got the man behind the music from NBC’s "Hannibal" at the controls.
Meanwhile, Meiburg—who is also one of the best culture critics in the country—continues down the more personal path he forged on Joy. The lyrics here brim with frustration over the political quagmire drowning the voice of American intelligence, especially in his adopted home state of Texas, over the last decade or so. Meiburg has said in the press leading up to Oxbow’s release that it is a protest record, and he has a very specific kind of protest record in mind: The big-sky rock of tracks like "Pale Kings" and "Glass Bones" are paired with the kind of lofty language that defined mid-'80s albums like U2’s The Unforgettable Fire and A Pagan Place by the Waterboys. These songs really soar, but none more so than "Only Child," a beautiful and lilting ballad. Nobody aims to write big-tent rock songs quite like this anymore.
The album is enlivened by a pulsing rhythmic undercurrent, informed seemingly by instrumental hip-hop and new wave. This more fluid groove replaces the brutal might of longtime Shearwater drummer Thor Harris, who is inexplicably absent from this endeavor. Songs like "Backchannels" and "Filaments" sound as though Meiburg is ghostwriting for Lorde, while "Quiet Americans"—with its big synths and bigger heart—seems to be channeling the Thompson Twins.
Since springing from the rib of Okkervil River, Shearwater has always made music bigger than the capacity of the clubs they play. Jet Plane and Oxbow feels like their moon shot out of that world. Throughout the album, Meiburg seems to be personally willing the band upward and outward, risking the kind of mainstream corniness that you only encounter when ambitions grow mountain-sized. It's impressive, and a credit to the band's pure craftmanship, that so much of this Wembley Stadium-ready collection was partly cut in a friend's home studio. Somehow, from these humble origins, they have made something spacious and expansive enough to feel conjured from the costly confines of a million-dollar studio like Abbey Road or Electric Lady. With Jet Plane and Oxbow, Shearwater achieve not only their grandest statement to date, but their most grounded as well.
