(Matador) www.matadorrecords.com

Jonathan Meiburg, beginning with 2002’s Everybody Makes Mistakes and gradually morphing Shearwater from an Okkervil River side project into a full time concern by the time of 2006-07’s Palo Santo/Palo Santo: Expanded Edition, has finally written his masterpiece. Meiburg’s signatures, now exquisitely refined, remain: ascending melodies that convey a deep yearning, a reaching forth; an astounding soprano singing voice; and astute lyric studies of the human condition, often couched in animal metaphors — here, piano ballad “The Snow Leopard,” about the frail nature of consciousness, and the insistent “Rooks,” whose images of birds crashing from the sky and being gathered to be burned “in a feathery pyre” is at once disturbing and poetic.

Rook flows so effortlessly as to suggest Concept! Alert! yet never succumbs to heavy-handedness; it’s as organic and inviting as Okkervil’s The Stage Names. It’s also deceptively complex, chiefly due to a conscious effort to expand the group’s sonic vision, which now includes strings and horns, into the realm of the cinematic (both the woodsy “Home Life” and the lush, swaying “Leviathan, Bound,” for example, seem plucked from the soundtrack of some doomed-love European art film). The album heralds Meiburg’s leap from gifted song stylist to master conductor and arranger — he’s been building towards this moment.

Standout Tracks: “Rooks,” “Leviathan Bound” FRED MILLS