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After the amazing musical success Jonathan Meiburg has had in the last year, it would seem really easy for him to lay back and enjoy the success. But for Meiburg, he only has a further desire to expand his musical exploration. Meiburg was, up until a month ago, a member of the band Okkervil River, who enjoyed their biggest critical and commercial success with their last album The Stage Names. However, he left the group due to the pressures of massive touring as well as working on a passion project band of his called Shearwater.

While Shearwater was originally an outlet for Meiburg and fellow Okkervil River member Will Sheff to work on quieter songs, they have quickly expanded to a full-fledged band that runs on epic buildups as shown on the new album Rook. Rook's opening track On The Death of the Water is noticably sedated to start, with Meiburg's voice and a simple piano chord creating an atmosphere of peace, until the halfway point unleashes a glorious breakout of instrumental glee. There is a lot of bombastic noise throughout Rook, but the record works in that none of the many instruments played throughout the album feel wasted. The horns feel as needed as the guitars and so on and so forth.

Meiburg and Sheff create several completely different types of songs with equally exhilarating buildups, as Rooks is centered on an excellent breakout of Spanish horns whereas Leviathan, Bound relies on a beautiful string line towards its midpoint. However, on the seven-minute opus Home Life, Shearwater goes for a calm sedated approach as the song reaches a very satisfying crescendo. Meiburg and Sheff have been around music long enough to know how to truly create an excellently paced album, as the record goes from a calm song like Lost Boys to a more high-energy track like Century Eyes keeping up a steady pace and never making the listener feel too bogged down by one type of track.

In fact, Rook's only flaw may be that many of the tracks like Century Eyes, Lost Boys, and Leviathan, Bound are far too short at two minutes for each song, while tracks like I Was A Cloud are far too long. This is not a flaw that holds the album's quality down, though, by any means. Rook is a wonderful record that continues to show the amazing creativity of Meiburg and Sheff. While fans may notice a huge difference from the poppier sounds of Okkervil River, Meiburg and Sheff create a record that is extremely fascinating and a very worthy listen.