In late July, we’ll be playing our first West Coast shows of the year, headlining with support from Husky, our labelmates from Down Under.

European friends, we will be back on the continent in late June and early July – stay tuned! (Edit 5/7: most EU shows are now announced.)

Whether or not you’re on our tour path, you may be interested in hearing the demo for You As You Were from Sub Pop’s 2012 Record Store Day compilation.

P.S. For those who still don’t have it, the MP3 version of Animal Joy is $5 on Amazon this month.

To coincide with the tour, we’ve released our second video for the album, “You As You Were”, directed by Alix Lambert, featuring costumes by our frequent collaborator Nicholas Kahn. It premiered on Stereogum, and we’ll soon host it here as well. See you on the other side. – JM

From left to right:
Mitch Billeaud, of Austin band The Lemurs, on guitar and keys,
Lucas Oswald (of Minus Story, Hospital Ships, and The Appleseed Cast) on guitar, keys, and backing vocals,
Danny Reisch (also of the Lemurs, and the producer of Animal Joy) on drums, and
Christiaan Mader (of Brass Bed) on bass and backing vocals.

It’s a different sound and feel for the band – more of a “rock” outfit than SW has been on previous tours – but it fits well with the sound of the new album, and it’s been fun to tear it up a bit. When you see us this year, these’ll be the faces you see.

Next: SXSW. Europe. And the US again. (JM)
(photos © 2012 Daniel Coston/www.danielcostonphotography.com)
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Our full SXSW show schedule:
Sunday 3/11:
5pm @ Waterloo Records, 600 N. Lamar Blvd.

Monday 3/12:
1pm @ French Legation, 802 San Marcos St.

Wednesday 3/14:
2pm @ Hypemachine Hype Hotel, 504 Trinity (JM and Lucas duo set)
5pm @ Parish, 214 East 6th St.

Thursday, March 15, 2012
7:30pm @ Mellow Johnny’s Bike Shop, 400 Nueces St.
1am @ PureVolume House, 504 Trinity Street (technically Friday early morning)

Friday, March 16, 2012
12:25pm @ Radio Day Stage – Austin Convention Center, 500 East Cesar Chavez
3:50pm @ Roky Erikson Ice Cream Social, Threadgills, 301 West Riverside
11pm @ Red 7 Patio, 611 E 7th St (Sub Pop Showcase)

Once we return to the States, we will be embarking on another tour in May with the incredible St. Vincent, ending in the Sasquatch! Festival on May 28.

If we have missed you so far, you can hear some of the new songs live in the studio. We did a session a few days ago with Philadelphia’s XPN2. It includes an interview that covers a lot of territory about Animal Joy and the tour as well as live performances of Dread Sovereign, You As You Were, Run the Banner Down, and Breaking the Yearlings.

Thanks to Sub Pop, EVERYBODY can stream the entire album on YouTube right now. The video below features a slideshow of photographs by our friend Nicholas Kahn of Kahn & Selesnick.

If you’re the digital music buying type, you can get it from iTunes with a digital booklet and a bonus track, “I’m So Glad” (not the Skip James song). The budget-conscious can pick it up at Amazon MP3, where it’s on sale for $6 for a limited time.

Meanwhile, tonight (2/6/2012) is the first show of the spring tour! We’re playing at the Record Bar in scenic Kansas City, MO. Check the Shows page for American and European tour dates, ticket links, and supporting act information.

We’re also happy to announce we’ll be at Sasquatch! at the end of May. More tour news is coming soon, so stay tuned!

Vinyl lovers: early purchases from SP or your friendly local record store will net you the “Loser Edition” colored vinyl, blood red swirled into black.

We’ve released a third track from the record, “You as You Were.” Give it a listen below and download it free!

Meanwhile, the tour begins February 6. We’ve added some headlining US dates – check out the tour page or the list on the homepage. Keep an eye out for more dates in the near future.

If you haven’t heard it yet, listen to and download lead-off track “Breaking the Yearlings.”

And speaking of old allies, we’ll be touring with our friend (and former tour manager) Sharon Van Etten in February (dates here).

Stay tuned for more release information, artwork, and dates here and overseas, which we’ll be announcing soon.

For more frequent (and trivial) updates, you can also follow our Facebook page.

To celebrate, we’re releasing a couple of new items on our bandcamp page:

The first is a set of live recordings from the Island Arc performance in January , where we played Palo Santo, Rook, and The Golden Archipelago back-to-back. You can actually hear us blow a breaker at the end of “Hail, Mary”.

The second, Why I Love My Home (songs for Charles Burchfield) is a pair of long, experimental songs written and performed by JM for the Whitney Museum’s exhibit of Burchfield’s art. These are studio versions of the songs, recorded by Danny Reisch, who’ll be working with us on our new full-length. These songs will be pressed on beautiful 12″ vinyl next year as part of Graveface Records’ subscription-only charity singles compilation.

We’ve also been busy outside Shearwater – Thor’s been touring with Michael Gira’s reformed Swans, and is about to release a new instrumental album, Coy/Thor, and a thick book of terrifying/hilarious drawings, A Post-Apocalyptic Tale of Friendship, on Austin’s Monofonus Press. Kimberly’s new play, “Miss Tibet”, will be read at Playwrights Foundation in San Francisco on May 16th and 17th. And JM’s been guest-starring, playing piano and wurlitzer on Bill Callahan’s new Apocalypse and lending some vocals to Okkervil River’s I Am Very Far.

We may not be touring as a band before early 2012, when the new album’s set to drop, but we expect we’ll be going just about everywhere after that.

xo

SW

For the first time in several years, we mostly sat out SXSW, though we’ll probably to be back next year – the only SW-related performance was a live soundtrack to some footage shot by Scottish filmmaker David Mackenzie on the remote island of Tristan da Cunha last year.

We’ve just started work on a new and very different album, about which we’ll have some major news soon.