In one sense, this eight-track collaboration between Pulitzer prize-winning composer-vocalist Caroline Shaw and Grammy award-winning cellist-composer Andrew Yee is a snapshot of a friendship. The title – Or, the Whale – comes from Melville’s Moby-Dick, and in particular from director Wu Tsang’s 2022 silent film version for which Shaw and Yee provided the score. A condensed suite combines cello, electronics and ethereal vocals in a haunting, folk-infused evocation of the novel, whale song and all.
Much here is similarly imaginative. Yee’s uplifting The Trees of Green-Wood channels Meredith Monk as Shaw sings a catalogue of trees organised by diameter of trunk: the greater the girth, the louder the music. Sophisticated processing and intricate engineering, crucial elements throughout, add to the heady aural atmosphere. Another duet, Shenandoah, is a tender, exploratory arrangement of the traditional shanty.
