Album of the Week: Searows – Death in the Business of Whaling
Staff Review
Searows, the solo project of American singer-songwriter Alec Duckart, releases their second album, Death in the Business of Whaling, via indie label Last Recordings On Earth this week. The record is the 25-year-old’s first full studio production, following the 2022 bedroom-recorded, self-released debut Guard Dog.
From the first spin, the lush, sophisticated production is immediately apparent and is a serious step up from the endearing lo-fi and largely acoustic aesthetic of earlier releases. Produced by Trevor Spencer, whose catalogue includes work with Beach House, Father John Misty and, most recently, Julianna Barwick & Mary Lattimore, the album realises a vast, seemingly amorphous, all-encompassing sonic environment. Honeyed swells of reverberation roll in and out, forming an ocean of sound that mirrors both the album’s title and its conceptual ambition.
Within this great oceanic expanse, the often immediate and frequently powerful emotionality of Searows’ songs cuts through, and it is the meeting of these apparent opposites, fragility and intricacy set against the dramatic magnitude of the soundscapes, that makes Death in the Business of Whaling such an engrossing listen. Like the great British painter, J.M.W. Turner, Searows seeks to find beauty and romance in the terrifying murk of existence. Phoebe Bridgers is an obvious contemporary touchstone, and these simple, tender songs are subtly amplified by sonic detail and a soft-focus approach, rendered rich in feeling, ever so close yet just out of reach.
When Searows’ full instrumental palette does rise to the surface, as on the excellent Photograph of a Cyclone, it does so without relying on pristine clarity. Instead, it conjures something akin to a Dreamtime Americana, conjuring a washed-out vision of the great American West, a frontier, a treacherous passage, both figurative and literal, as much psychological as it is physical, not unlike Ethel Cain’s recent modernisation of the Southern Gothic. Elsewhere, strobing, synth-like guitars glide across the surface of the Slowdive-esque shoegaze-folk of Hunter, while the stripped-back acoustic ballad Dirt offers a welcome shelter from the storm, its shimmering guitar and softly sung melody drifting through calmer, placid waters.
Crushing distorted chords and waves of guitar punctuate the vivid terrain of Dearly Missed, another clear highlight and one of the strongest songs Duckart has written to date. It’s the closest the album comes to a traditional alternative-rock track, as tension builds with each churn and clang of its grooving motifs. Through its swift, liquid-like shifts between quiet intimacy and explosive release, the track achieves a keening, anthemic catharsis. Later, In Violet almost inverts this formula, rather than bruising guitars, it is coiled, sparkling banjo motifs that drive the song’s melodic propulsion, recalling the early indie-folk of Iron & Wine and Sufjan Stevens, filtered through a contemporary lens tinted by artists such as Alex G and Bon Iver.
Like opening track Belly of the Whale, and indeed the album as a cohesive yet varied whole, In Violet underlines just how many strings Searows has to their bow, guitar, banjo, or whatever else is required to perfect each track’s immersive atmosphere.
