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Shearwater - new album, MP3 & 2010 Tour Dates w/ Wye Oak & Hospital Ships (Bowery Ballroom)

DOWNLOAD: Shearwater – Castaways (MP3)

Shearwater @ All Points West ’09 (more by Chris La Putt)
Shearwater

Matador will be releasing the new album by Shearwater, The Golden Archipelago, on February 23rd. You can preorder that in a variety of packages, including The Golden Dossier version which comes as a loose file of ephemera and goodies. More info on both the album and its special edition are below. A song off the record, “Castaways,” is posted above.

They’ll be in Europe this February and early March before touring North America in March and April with Wye Oak and Hospital Ships (openers vary by date). One of those dates is a Bowery Ballroom show on Saturday, March 27th (with both of those openers). Tickets are now on AmEx presale. General sale starts Friday at noon.

As NPR pointed out, Hospital Ships “founder and sole member Jordan Geiger has a long, varied indie-rock resume, with stints as the trumpeter in Shearwater and the chief songwriter of Minus Story.”

Shearwater drummer Thor Harris will also be keeping busy this year as a member of Swans.

More Shearwater album info and all tour dates are below…

Shearwater

Shearwater – The Golden Archipelago Limited Edition Dossier

In conjunction with the release of Shearwater’s new album, The Golden Archipelago, singer Jonathan Meiburg and designer Mark Ohe have created a beautiful, full-color, 75-page, 8 x 10.5″ dossier as a companion piece.

It’s a visual guide to the world of the album, primarily composed of photographs and documents collected by JM from islands and other singular places around the world. Among its pages are the national anthem of Bikini Atoll, the story of a charming and fatally obsessed German aviator and explorer, notes from the daily life of a remote Aboriginal village occupied by missionaries, and photographs from an island Jules Verne considered “The End of the World,” where endangered animals remain unafraid of humans. It also features production credits and full lyrics for The Golden Archipelago and its B-sides.

Images from the dossier are featured in the above video, and some beautiful sample pages can be found at Matador.

The dossier’s loose, numbered pages are perfect for spreading across a desk and poring over by the light of a single bulb. They will come packaged in a personalized, numbered, heavy-duty envelope fastened with a string tie (also found in the link above).

Meiburg and Ohe worked for weeks to compile and design the dossier, which was originally intended to accompany a special edition of the album. But the cost of printing the complete dossier at full size turned out to be prohibitive, and the band’s record label – though thrilled with the result – couldn’t figure out a way to make it work. It fell to the band to make the dossier available as it was originally intended.

Thus, you can obtain a physical copy of the full dossier in all its glory only by donating to this project on Kickstarter.

You’ll need to pledge at least $30 in order to receive the dossier, which covers the costs of printing and shipping a single copy.

Shearwater – 2010 Tour Dates
Feb 17 Melkweg Amsterdam
Feb 18 Botanique Brussels
Feb 19 Le Nouveau Casino Paris
Feb 20 L’Omnibus St-Malo
Feb 21 The Freebutt Brighton
Feb 22 Brudenell Social Club Leeds
Feb 23 Captains Rest Glasgow
Feb 24 Ruby Lounge Manchester
Feb 25 Scala London
Feb 26 4AD Diksmuide
Feb 27 Knust Hamburg
Feb 28 Magnet club Berlin
Mar 02 59 to 1 Munich
Mar 03 L’Usine (PTR) Geneva
Mar 04 Nouveau Monde Fribourg
Mar 05 La Casa 139 Milan
Mar 07 La (2) de Apolo Barcelona
Mar 08 Moby Dick Madrid
Mar 13 Red 7 Austin, TX #
Mar 24 Atlanta, GA The Earl *
Mar 25 Chapel Hill, NC Local 506
Mar 26 Washington, Rock And Roll Hotel *
Mar 27 New York, NY Bowery Ballroom *
Mar 30 Cambridge, MA T. T. The Bear’s *
Mar 31 Montreal QUE, UE La Sala Rossa +
April 01 Toronto, ON Lee’s Palace *
April 02 Ithica, NY Castaways *
April 04 Chicago, IL Lincoln Hall *
April 06 Minneapolis, MN 400 Bar
April 07 Grinnell, IA Garnder Lounge @ Grinnell College *
April 09 Norman, OK The Opolis *
April 22 Cleveland, OH Rhythm Room +
April 23 Tucson, AZ Club Congress +
April 24 Silver Lake, CA Spaceland +
April 25 San Francisco, CA Bottom of the Hill +
April 27 Portland, OR Doug Fir Lounge +

# w/ Xiu Xiu & Shearwater solo
* w/ Wye Oak, Hospital Ships
+ w/ Hospital Ships