Blue Water White Death (self-titled)
LABEL: Graveface Records

Just in time for Halloween, the haunting new side project between Xiu Xiu’s Jamie Stewart and Shearwater’s Jonathan Meiburg, Blue Water White Death, are releasing their eponymous debut album via Graveface Records that is two parts eerie and one part experimental, melodic journey that takes the listener 20,000 leagues under the sea and back again.

Both the name and concept for this album stem from a chilling 1970s documentary about explorers on the quest for great white sharks in Australia’s Dangerous Reef which is only fitting because the record itself sounds like the score to a low-budget B movie or worse, a cassette of Hollywood horror sound effects brought out once a year for a romp in a haunted house.

“What Blue Water White Death lack in accessibility and catchiness, they make up for in sonic innovation and weirdness...”

Blue Water White Death was written and recorded in exactly one week, which is a feat both highly impressive and blatantly obvious. While there are some incredible moments on this disc that intricately weave together a slightly sinister narrative (“Song for the Greater Jihad”) there are other instances on the album that sound as if the duo are simply puttering around, dragging a string of tin cans behind them, such as on the ridiculously titled, Insane Clown Posse inspired “Rendering the Juggalos.”

Moving forward on this avant-garde, underwater escapade, ominous standout track ‘Grunt Tube’ sounds more and more like a vaudeville sailor’s funeral procession with every dull clang of a piano, the drone of an organ and Jamie Stewart speaking nonsensical lyrics in tongues like, “There’s a place in France/Where the naked ladies dance/There’s a hole in the wall/Where the men can see it all.”

Stewart and Meiburg could easily have been separated at birth, their vocals become so similar and intertwined over the duration of this collaborative effort that it becomes easier to view the two eccentrics as one entity—a two-headed, multi-instrumentalist creature with a voice as golden as a prepubescent choir boy.

What Blue Water White Death lacks in accessibility and catchiness, it's made up for in sonic innovation and weirdness but unless you’re a diehard Xiu Xiu or Shearwater fan, you may feel as if the songwriting team of Stewart & Meiburg have walked the plank with this effort, falling completely off the deep end of obscurity.


REVIEWED BY MICHELLE McGLYNN
MICHELLE’S FAVE TRACKS: “Song for the Greater Jihad” • “Nerd Future • “The End of Sex”


FREE MP3: “Song for the Greater Jihad” (right-click & save)