The sixth full-length from Austin's Shearwater is an ambitious project which looks to conceptualize The Golden Achipelago's music with a sprawling 50+ page book and accompanying photos. A great physical release in a day where things have gone the way of digi-packaging and lyric-less, one page inserts. The Golden Archipelago aims to create a beautiful album but the results seem like too much effort has been put into it. Weird but true. And the result comes off highly pretentious meaning that critics are gobbling this stuff up and praising its beauty while the average listener will hear this and absorb little. As a whole the album is exactly what it sets out to be; a gorgeous listen that details loneliness, nature, and sorrow. But it terms of repeat listens, only a few tracks ("Castaways" is an obvious standout and the production on "Uniforms is pretty remarkable) require multiple listens. Music snobs (aka Animal Collective fans) will eat this release up but others, tread carefully.
3.2/5.0
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