Musicians, like superheroes, often assume boring alter egos to pay the bills. Stephen Malkmus worked for years as an art-museum security guard, Elvis Costello did data entry and pretty much every gangster rapper ever claims to have sold crack. But Jonathan Meiburg is an exception to the rule. As an ornithologist, the former Okkervil River keyboardist and current full-time Shearwater frontman has spent much of his time travelling to untouched ends of the Earth. Which is pretty badass — like if Superman’s secret identity were Batman.
On the phone from his Texan home, Meiburg agrees that ornithology is pretty cool. In fact, nerding out over grey jays, bald eagles and “the elusive white-headed woodpecker,” the singer sounds like an overly enthused teenager displaying the gems of his Magic: The Gathering card collection.
Unfortunately, Meiburg’s responsibilities as a musician — which include chatting up journalists at 8:30am Texas time — aren’t always as enthralling. “Vic Chesnutt said something about that that was really funny. He said, ‘At first I loved interviews. It was like going to the shrink every day. But then I realized that it was like going to the psychiatrist for the first time every day. You never make any progress.’”
Despite constant movement, the singer says that touring seems similarly stagnant. “It’s like a really long business trip. It’s fun, but you never get to immerse yourself in a place and learn about it, unless you count the van as that place. Your feeling when you get back isn’t that you covered 8,000 miles, more that you were in a small box for a long time. It’s not because these places are indistinguishable as cities, but the places you end up in are pretty indistinguishable, just a black box with a PA in it.”
But Meiburg has seen many unique places as an ornithologist, including the Falkland Islands, where he first conceived of Shearwater’s fifth and latest release, Rook. “I remember hearing the melodies in my head while I was there. When you go to a place like that, where you don’t have to worry about cellphones and things, your head clears out and makes room for other things.”
The Falklands’ serene environment echoes elegantly through Rook’s delicate arrangements, Meiburg’s rich, vulnerable voice (imagine an understated, indie-rock Phantom of the Opera) and the record’s lyrical focus. “You can go places that you’re pretty sure no one has ever been before and there’s this feeling of what the world was like before we were everywhere. In a way the difference between these two worlds is a lot of what the album’s about. These places are becoming ever more remote from us. This is the age where we are everywhere eating everything. But that will probably pass in one way or another.”
Meiburg laughs, as if to say, “Human extinction! Get it?”
“In a way,” the singer continues, “the album’s an attempt to come to peace with that because it’s true that everything’s going to change in a way we can’t anticipate.”
On a smaller scale, this uncertainty also applies to Meiburg’s career. Two years ago, while touring behind Palo Santo, a lauded song cycle inspired by the life of Nico, Shearwater received an unexpected it’s-not-you-it’s-me speech from Misra, their record label. Undeterred, Meiburg started emailing record companies, quickly landing a contract with the larger and more prominent indie Matador Records.
“It was really exciting,” Meiburg remembers. “We said, ‘Wait a minute, this might not be over; it might be better than we thought.’” With label instability behind them, Shearwater moved full steam ahead — kind of. The first thing the Matador signees did was re-record five Palo Santo songs on their own penny, releasing a new double-disc version.
But Meiburg promises that we won’t be seeing another version of Rook. “We’re really happy with how it turned out. Besides, I remember driving out to the studio towards the end there and I passed this big sign, which had fallen into the road from the road works and it said, ‘Be prepared to stop.’ I thought, ‘This is a message from the cosmos.’”