Album Of The Week: Shearwater Animal Joy

Shearwater's last three albums, the ones that brought the Austin band to prominence, all made up parts of a loose overarching concept-album trilogy, one that had something to do with islands and bird-migration patterns and general isolation. Once a band gets done with a hugely ambitious project like that one, the temptation is probably to just crank out a quick batch of tunes with nothing to do with anything, to explore its unambitious side. And advance press about Shearwater's new one Animal Joy indicates that the band has stepped back from its orchestral grandiosity and made something resembling a straight-up rock album. But that description doesn't quite fit, if only because frontman Jonathan Meiburg's canyon-spanning falsetto is entirely incapable of doing anything unambitious. Even when this band is doing its best to be simple and direct, their songs come out sounding like finely textured monuments. There's something inspirational about that.