Fellow Travelers Limited Vinyl LP

Shearwater Fellow Travelers Limited Vinyl LP

Overview:
· “‘Fellow Travelers’ wasn’t supposed to be a full length record,
so I’m a little surprised to admit that it’s my favorite Shearwater
album so far. It was meant to be a small thing to release
between ‘Animal Joy’ and the next full length. But it took on a
life of its own. Re-imagining and renovating songs by the bands
we’ve toured with was like leafing through a scrapbook, and
brought back the highs and lows of a decade of touring.
· “Touring is an expression of faith - in yourself, in your friends,
in the hope that the world has a place for you. In that spirit, I
invited all the bands we covered to play on ‘Fellow Travelers’,
with the caveat that you couldn’t play on your own song.
Almost everyone rose to the bait: Chris from the Baptist
Generals turned Clinic’s ‘Tomorrow’ into a stomping incantation,
while Clinic infected the Generals’ ‘Fucked Up Life’ with drum
machines, radio signals, and combo organ. I added recordings I
made of birds and waves in the Falklands to David Thomas
Broughton’s ‘Ambiguity’, and he sent us a tape he made of
sparrows, bulbuls, and the clanking shovels of highway workers
in Pyongyang, North Korea, which we spliced into our rockanthem
version of Xiu Xiu’s ‘I Luv the Valley OH!!’. And Jenn
from Wye Oak, who, like us, had also toured with Lou B, added
vocals to ‘Natural One’.
· “Leon Trotsky, who gave the words ‘fellow travelers’ their
political aura, once wrote that “a protest against reality, either
conscious or unconscious, active or passive, optimistic or
pessimistic, always forms part of a really creative piece of
work.” Listening back, I get a feeling of common effort, of
common purpose, among all of our different musical paths;
we’ve all tried to defy or transform reality in small ways with
our music, and to prove it with our performing lives.” -
Jonathan Meiburg, Shearwater, March 2013

Featured Tracks:
Our Only Sun
I Luv The Valley OH!!
Hurts Like Heaven
Natural One
Ambiguity
Cheerleader
Tomorrow
A Wake For The Minotaur
Mary Is Mary
Fucked Up Life