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100

Delusions of Adequacy

With Rook they have fashioned an album that is melodic, tender, outstanding but above all, captivating. One thing is for sure, this is one of the best albums of the year.

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The Onion (A.V. Club)

Meiburg's voice focuses each track on quietly bold melodies, strung through with excitement, wonder, and joy.

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Village Voice

Rook is great, with an emotional clarity and narrative acuity that makes it one of the year's most rewarding listens.

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All Music Guide

This "calm before the storm" aesthetic dominates Rook, and in another testament to its short running time, works beautifully, illuminating the few straightforward pieces like "Century Eyes," "Leviathan, Bound," and the brooding title track like a centuries-old woodcut, and allowing the tension that permeates the entire affair to ebb and flow naturally, resulting in one of the most heady and satisfying albums of the year.

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PopMatters

Shearwater has magnificently outdone itself. Not only is Rook destined to be named one of 2008’s favorites, but it could be one of the best albums for years to come.

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Austin Chronicle

Rook is an epic undertaking that plumbs the depths of the seas ("Leviathan, Bound") to the heavens themselves ("I Was a Cloud," "The Hunter's Star") for the sounds that make the stories sing.

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cokemachineglow

Worth mentioning about Rook, as something of a corollary to its ostensible punch-in-the-gut dynamics, is how creatively put together it all is.

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Slant Magazine

While Shearwater has always been album-oriented (they've been known in the past, like Okkervil River, for their themed albums) Rook is by far their most successful to date.

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Under The Radar

Rook is the kind of music that people fall in love with, not simply because it’s, by most metrics, wonderful music, but because it contains enough mood swings that no matter how you are feeling, it’s always appropriate. [Summer 2008]

Sputnikmusic

While Meiburg's voice, charisma, and songwriting dominate this album, his backing band does a fantastic job of growing and falling, creating the dramatic effects he envisioned.

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Uncut

From clanging rock songs to eerie ambient pieces to sensual acoustic reveries, it's all highly detailed and perfectly weighted. [Aug 2008, p.98]

Blender

[Meiburg] applies this Audubon-ish enthusiasm to his songs, too, crafting a rich, occasionally macabre, fantasy world populated by starlings, gulls and solitary falconers.

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Prefix Magazine

While earlier albums hinted at the kind of open-air pastorals that the band was capable of, Rook delivers on all the promise.

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musicOMH.com

Rooks is a hugely self-assured and often compelling album, which looks outside of the world of modern man for inspiration, and in most cases, finds it in spades.

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Pitchfork

As impressive and uniformly gorgeous a record as Rook is, the band's best work is likely still to come.

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The Phoenix

Rook is flush with the hallmarks of Shearwater’s style, from high-wire drama to near-hymnal stillness. Although its songs aren’t as uniformly good as those on 2006’s "Palo Santo."

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Spin

While Jonathan Meiburg’s uneasy high quaver has always generated the kind of simmering intensity that made Jeff Buckley so gripping and unnerving, canny tonal shifts give his introspective songs a bristling, heightened urgency.

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Drowned In Sound

It has resulted in a not-completely enchanting experience, but an involving and worthwhile one nonetheless. Explore for its many corners of interest.

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Dusted Magazine

If Rook is as ambitious as they feel they can be without adding excess, then that's a good tradeoff, but their sound right now fits them like a pair of shoes that are a size too small.

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Tiny Mix Tapes

The songs here tend to go nowhere for a quiet couple of minutes before bursting randomly into tightly composed melodrama, which could be mistaken for actually going somewhere.

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What Our Users Said

The average user rating for this album is 8.5 (out of 10) based on 39 User Votes

Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Christopher H gave it a5:
Gotta agree with Charlie Q, except that I mind the vocals - they're a bit too warbling for me. The melodramatic production was layed on a bit too thick - it came off cheesy and emo-ish. If they has kept it more sparse, perhaps, it would have let the songs come out more. (there was a few bon iver moments that I liked...)

Stanley D gave it a10:
Beautiful album, yes melancholy but still enjoyable. Something to listen to when unwinding after a hard day at work or a quiet hike in the wilderness.

Andy W gave it a10:
This album blew me away. I find it almost too majestic and emotionally powerful to listen too sometimes as it demands my complete attention. It is an incredible listen - powerful, tender, beautiful, smart. The best thing I have heard in a long time. And, live they do not dissapoint.

Jyotirmaya D. gave it an8:
This beautiful album was more than I expected. I expected something lovely, but it has gone beyond that. It has gone to my heart and it is a very heartfelt album... I never thought I'd ever get this enjoyment from listening to an album based on birds however.

Pranav O. gave it a10:
Such melancholy,such sadness.Its a work of gr8 art.The kind of album that leaves you short of words.It is so poignant & beautiful.Brilliantly poetic.A perfect album which ever one looks at it.

Charlie Q. gave it a4:
Okay, I will listen to this album again, because I really don't "get" it yet. I don't mind the voice, but I'm not particularly in love with it. And as for the music, well, one of the critics referred to it as the "calm before the storm". I guess I can agree with that, but when is the storm coming?....because the calm is kind of boring.

David R. gave it a9:
We're all impressed that Tiny Mix Tapes is a fan of Talk Talk's fairly obscure final two albums, but he's way off on this review. This is a beautiful record and it really sinks into your soul after repeated listens.

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