On October 17-19, 2018, Shearwater (and friends) performed all three albums of David Bowie's famous "Berlin Trilogy" of Low (1977), "Heroes" (1977) and Lodger (1979) at the Winter Garden Atrium of Brookfield Place in New York City, for WNYC's New Sounds program, hosted by John Schaefer.
To present these strange, beautiful, difficult albums in all their glory, Shearwater's Jet Plane and Oxbow lineup of JM, Emily Lee, Sadie Powers, Josh Halpern and Lucas Oswald was augmented by Jamie Stewart (of Xiu Xiu), Ed Rodriguez (of Deerhoof), Travis Laplante (of Battle Trance), Eliot Krimsky (of Glass Ghost), and Dan Duszynski (of Loma)—and, conducting "Warszawa", Bowie's longtime guitarist and musical director Carlos Alomar.
it's safe to say these are the last songs by another artist that Shearwater will record or perform for quite a while (we've got to make another album of our own, after all). But these shows were a highlight of our performing lives, and reverse-engineering these unusual and inspiring records on their 40th anniversary was a delight and a challenge for us.