[photos by PSquared Photography]
Last month we captured a really outstanding performance by Shearwater at the Mercury Lounge. The show was in the early stages of the band’s tour in support of its superb new album Jet Plane and Oxbow and it featured most of the new album in a tour de force evening. But one of the non-album highlights of the night was the band’s cover of David Bowie’s “Look Back in Anger” from the Lodger album. We learned that night that Shearwater had rehearsed the entire album and upon their return to NYC, would play it live.
Last week at Rough Trade, Shearwater offered a gift to their fans — a free show at a great venue that consisted of that previously promised Lodger show. Jonathan Meiburg has discussed how this fairly obscure late-70s Bowie work helped him personally through some difficult times, but for this performance Meiburg discussed many of the aspects of the album in detail in segments in between the songs. Lodger is the last of the trio of Bowie albums produced in collaboration with Brian Eno, and as expected the Eno influence is all over this record particularly in a kind of world music feel. But the addition of legendary guitarist Adrian Belew also added more of a rock feel to this album as compared with the previous two records in the trilogy, Heroes and Low. The guitar based songs on the album gave Jonathan an opportunity to stretch out and use his pedals liberally. He remarked at the end of the show that he’d never used his phaser so often. While the band has rehearsed these songs and played a few of them at earlier shows, we learned that this was the first time that Shearwater has played the album start to finish. But you wouldn’t know — the songs were well played and the band was tight and the set was a fitting tribute to the late legend.
I recorded this set as I have all my previous trips to this venue — Schoeps cards mounted in the center of the Soundboard booth and mixed with an excellent feed, this time mixed superbly by the band’s touring FOH Jay. The sound quality is quite excellent. Enjoy!
Download the Complete Show [MP3] / [FLAC]
Stream the Complete Show (banter tracks removed):
Shearwater
2016-03-15
Rough Trade
Brooklyn NY
Digital Master Recording
Soundboard + Audience Matrix
Soundboard [Engineer: Jay] + Schoeps CCM4u Cardioids > Sound Devices 744t > 2 x 24bit 48kHz wav files > Soundforge (post-production) > CDWave 1.95 (tracking) > TLH > flac (320 MP3 and tagging via Foobar)
Recorded and Produced by nyctaper
Setlist:
[Total Time 47:28]
01 Fantastic Voyage
02 [banter – Lodger]
03 African Night Flight
04 Move On
05 Yassassin
06 [banter – Adrian Belew]
07 Red Sails
08 [banter – singles in the middle]
09 DJ
10 Look Back in Anger
11 [band introductions]
12 Boys Keep Swinging
13 [banter – SNL]
14 Repetition
15 [thanks]
16 Red Money
SUPPORT Shearwater: Website | Facebook | Twitter | BUY Jet Plane and Oxbow
Recent Comments