Ask a Local: Jonathan Meiburg of Shearwater

This winter, Austinist wanted to take some time to check in with some of our favorite local performers, artists and musicians to see what they enjoyed in 2008. Our request was simple: give us a few things that you enjoyed listening to this year, and feel free to include releases that might not have been released in 2008, but that found their way onto your turntable anyhow. We'll be sharing our own list too, but be patient and hear what some of our favorite folks thought was worthwhile in '08.

Today we're checking in with Shearwater's Jonathan Meiburg. Meiburg had a very busy year with his band's latest, Rook (Matador), as well as a digital EP (The Snow Leopard) and extensive touring in the U.S. and abroad. The new year will find Meiburg & Co. in the studio again, but until then we're thankful that he was able to squeeze in some time for us. Here's what he recommends:

1. Pekos/Yoro Diallo (from Yalla Yalla Records). This gritty, ecstatic recording, made on a boombox in a village somewhere in Mali, is one of the most mesmerizing musical documents I’ve ever heard, and all the more beguiling because it appears to spring from a place where performances like this are ordinary.

2. Mt Eerie Lost Wisdom. Sad, beautiful, and strangely addictive. I couldn’t stop listening to this deceptively modest record of songs about grief and loss for days after I bought it.

3. Clinic Do It!. I love that this band burrows further into their own menacing (but oddly whimsical) musical world with every album. There’s a nearly religious fervor to this fuzzed-out collection of danceable psych-dirges. Guaranteed to put an evil grin on your face.

4. Nina Simone Emergency Ward/It Is Finished/Black Gold (German reissue). Three lesser-known live albums packaged together, including her amazing 20-minute version of "My Sweet Lord," Exuma's haunting "Dambala," and "Aint Got No (I Got Life)" that puts the studio recording to shame, and many other shiver-inducing moments. This set explores her incredible musical and emotional range, from exultant to exhausted, as well as any I've heard.

5. Arthur Russell Love Is Overtaking Me. This year's Wild Combination film about Russell's life and art changed the way I thought about his music, and this collection, which pulls songs from a massive store of previously unreleased recordings, made me love him. It's sequenced thoughtfully and gracefully, filling in the gaps between his previously available albums, and revealing their scattered lights as parts of an elaborate and lovely constellation.