Review: Shearling – Motherfucker, I Am Both: “Amen” and “Hallelujah”…

Style: experimental rock, noise rock, post-rock, post-punk, avant-folk (mixed vocals, spoken word)
Recommended for fans of: Sprain, Swans, A Silver Mount Zion, Slint, Maruja, Talk Talk
Country: California, United States
Release date: 1 May 2025

Stitched together out of thousands of hours of studio recordings, Talk Talk’s 1988 painstakingly crafted masterpiece, Spirit of Eden, was a landmark album for post-rock. The band sat in a blacked out room equipped with an oil projector and strobe light twelve hours a day for several months, listening to the same six tracks on repeat; session musicians would jam for hours on end only for Talk Talk to use mere seconds of the result; and the group recorded with a twenty-five person choir only to decide “nah, this ain’t it.” Spirit of Eden is a mosaic, and the tiles are treasures plundered from endless hours of tapes. That the project came together as seamlessly as it did is remarkable—one could not listen to Spirit of Eden for the first time and discern that it was sutured together note by note.

To create their debut record Motherfucker, I Am Both: “Amen” and “Hallelujah”…, Shearling—born out of the recently defunct noisy post-rock band Sprain—have similarly sewn together segments from hundreds of hours of largely improvisational recordings. The result is a single, monolithic (Motherfucker is a single sixty-two minute track) slab of noisy post-rock, avant-folk, and obnoxious British post-punk.

Motherfucker is cinematic in scope, driven by the lyrics which cover a bifurcated narrative—one side about Idaho; the other, Eden. Prosaic yet poetry, the wordsmithing is intriguing with the two stories weaving in and out of each other in a stream-of-consciousness rambling. Occasionally, the poetry touches on brilliant. Highlights include: “And the spots on our Appaloosa¹ hide / Might be mistaken for constellations at night / By obligated stars and half-imagined lines / Splattered intentionally there against the night sky” and the vulgar honesty of “I know I’m naked / Eve’s cunt obscured now / By the branch of a huckleberry bush / Adam’s cock now / So tightly sheathed by a palm frond / Before the mirror I too place a hand over / My little Appaloosa / Tucked silently away in his little stable.” The storyline reads as an allegory for queer shame from growing up in Idaho—the Appaloosa taking on an apotheosized and subverted role². The intricate symbolism is maddeningly dense, however, and some of the literary devices are implemented on the amateurish side, albeit fitting the crazed descent into madness of the storytelling.

The bard of this chaotic story, Alexander Kent, provides an impassioned vocal performance that will make or break the album for many. His first vocal entry after the first 4:00 of instrumental noodling, dissonance, and feedback is an incredibly unpleasant moan. From there, he ranges from dramatic spoken word to the rambled shouting of a madman, from operatic croons to gruff, almost-growled barks and wailing moans. His voice drips with pain—maybe some malice—from years of shame and stigma, and the screams can be cathartic (the intermittent large climaxes are the prime examples), but for an unfortunate portion of the time, Kent’s atonal shouts and vocal deliveries are grating, horrific for listening; he needs to save the aggressive shouts for the crescendos lest they ruin their gravitas… which they certainly do. The godawful singing fits the vulgarity and verisimilitude of the lyrics, but Kent should focus on a more subtle delivery when the music calls for it. 

The music on Motherfucker traverses a diverse range of influences. The record is spliced together from a mix of phone-recorded demos, jams, live recordings, and traditional studio sessions, Shearling carefully attempted to put together the recordings into a cohesive sonic epic à la Talk Talk… emphasis on attempted, though. The songwriting of Motherfucker transcends stream-of-consciousness into the nonsensical. Climaxes materialize out of nowhere; Pharoah Sanders-esque saxophone parts or home-made Gamelan bells are equally as likely to be played by Shearling; ethereal industrial styles reminiscent of Lingua Ignota make their appearances in between the abrasive noise rock; and non-Western drumming styles may transition into glitchy electronic beats. Nary a consideration is made for transitions, either. Even the final five minutes after the final epic climax—the clear high point of the album is from 38-46 minutes as the bass pulsations lead into increasingly potent doses of screaming and crushing instrumentals—feel like they have little thought put into how they fit into the flow, with flatulent, deflated horns and some final random screams closing out the track. Shearling ensure the listener never knows what’s coming next.

Producing an album sewn from several different recording methods proves difficult for Shearling, too. Unlike Spirit of Eden which feels impossible to know was blended together as it was, Motherfucker’s collage never coalesces completely. Whatever instrumental section currently backs the vocals is unduly emphasized in the mix, and the clash of dynamics and styles renders Motherfucker a disappointingly and disjointedly assembled album. Shearling achieved an opus as haywired as it is intense, yet they get lost in the sauce doing so, the songwriting too scatterbrained for its own good. 

Many post-rock albums have suffered from over-ambition in the past forty years, and Motherfucker suffers for it, too; yet, Shearling have certainly achieved something admirable here—granted, over-long, insane, and extremely challenging (and frankly painful). To improve on the deep compositional flaws, Shearling ought to look back to Spirit of Eden. Finally, that Motherfucker is part one of a massive two-part epic must be mentioned. Clearly, Shearling are overflowing with ideas—hundreds of hours of them—so I hope they manage to restrain themselves without losing the ambitious charm so central to their identity.

Recommended tracks: it’s a one track album…
You may also like: Cime, Natural Snow Buildings, Ken Mode, Sumac & Moor Mother
Final verdict: 4/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Facebook | Instagram

Label: independent

Shearling is:
Alexander Kent: Vocals, Engineering, Production, Cover Art Design, Guitar, Synthesizer, Trombone, Samples, Hammered Dulcimer, Banjo, Harmonium, Accordion, Singing Saw, Percussion, Taishogoto, Organ, Glockenspiel, Mellotron, Mandolin, Autoharp, Piano, Bells
Sylvie Simmons: Guitar, Synthesizer, Organ, Hi-C Programming, Samples
With guests:
Wes Nelson: Bass, Upright Bass
Andrew “Hayes” Chanover: Drums
Rachel Kennedy: Vocals
Mate Tulipan: Tenor Saxophone, Trombone
Ian Thompson: Alto Saxophone

1. The state horse of Idaho with a splotchy hindquarters resembling a Dalmatian. ↩︎
2. I mean, check out that album cover. In the context of this being a queer narrative, it is certainly striking. ↩︎