New CDs from Shearwater, Heartless Bastards and Amos Lee, three acts also playing SXSW

This week, new CDs from three bands who are official South by Southwest showcasing bands, two with Austin ties.

Shearwater

'Animal Joy'

(Sub Pop)

At the beginning of last year, Shearwater, at the time an Austin-based band consisting of core members Jonathan Meiburg, Thor Harris and Kimberly Burke, played a show at the Central Presbyterian Church in downtown Austin. Though the venue was enough to make the event special on its own, the band upped the ante, playing its past three albums — "Palo Santo," "Rook" and "The Golden Archipelago," collectively referred to as "The Island Arc" — in their entirety, in order.

That's a lot of music, but the group has become such a live force that it was a hardly a chore to stay seated in church pews for three hours. Meiburg's voice, a force on its own, combined with his often strange and otherworldly lyrics and Harris' arsenal of homemade drums, dulcimers and percussion, made for a concert experience unlike anything else. The event was also bittersweet. Meiburg framed it as the close of a chapter for the band, and while it wasn't clear what was next, there was the sense that something was about to change.

"I had such a great time playing at that show," Meiburg says. "It was a really special experience, but at the end of the last song, I had this feeling that we've kind of reached the end of this approach, I really would like to try something different, I want to reimagine it. That really felt like the end of an era."

Over the past year, there have been some changes for the band. It switched labels, from Matador to Sub Pop. Harris and Burke, who play on "Animal Joy," have stepped away as well, though Meiburg says they remain members of the group. The biggest change, though, is in the music. Meiburg has shed any previous inclination toward the epic and abstract for something personal and direct.

"I wanted to make a record that wasn't quite as cerebral; something that had not just a head but also a body," Meiburg says. "I've always been suspicious of putting myself in my own songs as a character, but I decided I wasn't going to shy away from that on this record."

He didn't shy away. "Animal Joy" is a dramatic and compelling change of direction, filled with a side of the band's leader that has never really surfaced on his other releases. The songs themselves approach that transition, as well the ensuing struggles, head on. "You Were As You Were" is an awakening, closing with an energized confession: "I am leaving the life" on repeat. It's unclear whether the "Johnny" he's addressing on "Immaculate" is himself or not, but it's overtly confrontational: "Johnny get a hold of your life/wherever I go your face is in front of me."

One thing that hasn't necessarily changed for Meiburg is his connection to the animal world, which creates a strain of immediacy running throughout "Animal Joy":

"The great lesson if you have an animal that they teach you is that they are so present in every moment," he says. "They're really sad or really excited, but whatever it is that they are, they're 100 percent that, and they're right there. So often we tend to live off in the future somewhere, or the Internet, and animal joy I think of as that feeling of intense involvement with doing what you're doing right now. That can be frightening, that can be exhilarating, but you know it when you feel it, and in some ways I think that's when we're closest to the animal world."

— Peter Mongillo

In addition to SXSW, Shearwater plays March 4 at Antone's and March 11 at Waterloo Records.

The Heartless Bastards

'Arrow'

(Partisan)

Yes, there are people who are very good at playing rock 'n' roll music in Austin. Erika Wennerstrom and the rest of the Heartless Bastards are among them. The band's story has been fairly well-documented — Wennerstrom started out in Dayton, Ohio, where she fell in love with locals like Guided by Voices. A run-in with fellow Ohioan Patrick Carney of the Black Keys led to the Heartless Bastards' signing with Fat Possum.