Shearwater ‘Breaking the Yearling’
The video for Shearwater’s new single, “Breaking the Yearling,” contrasts footage of wild and taxidermied animals with extraordinarily creepy images of singer Jonathan Meiburg lip-synching while having his apparently-dead body restructured by filmmaker Branan Edgens. “In our college days, [Edgens] used to use me as a guinea pig for some of his experimental makeup effects,” says Meiburg. “For the video for ‘Breaking the Yearling,’ I wanted to figure out a way to make use of some of the amazing footage Branan’s shot over the years from around the world – especially beautiful scenes of animals and landscapes from Namibia, Thailand and Alaska – and we hit on the idea of using the American Museum of Natural History as a sort of gateway into these places, like the wood between the worlds in The Magician’s Nephew, my favorite of the Narnia books. But then Branan, with a gleam in his eye, suggested that by interacting with the stuffed animals, my character might enter more into their world than I’d bargained for. I think he might have just been looking for a reason to cover me in alginate and plaster again, for old time’s sake.”