You can now download “Fucked Up Life,” the second single from Shearwater’s Fellow Travelers, a new collection of reinventions and collaborations with artists they’ve toured with over the years, out November 25th in North America and Europe on Sub Pop.  “Fucked Up Life” is Shearwater’s rendering of the song written by beloved Denton, TX band (and labelmates) The Baptist Generals, and features additional instrumentation from UK band Clinic.

Shearwater’s Jonathan Meiburg says of “Fucked Up Life”: “I used to watch the Baptist Generals play this song in Austin back in the early 2000s, and it brought me almost to tears every time – the tenderness and fondness of it, the feeling of watching a friend or lover enter a bad place you’ve already been, and knowing there’s no way out but for them to go all the way through.  And the helplessness of knowing that your love for someone else isn’t always enough, laced with the hope that they’ll learn to muddle through on their own. It seemed like the perfect way to end the record—with a parting of ways, a journey’s end.

Clinic’s contribution to this song was the biggest surprise of the album, to me.  I sent the acoustic guitar track, a scratch vocal, and basic drums over to them via email, and they returned the song festooned with all the trademark Clinic sounds; the bouncy bass and drum machine, the radio-wave synth effects, the overdriven combo organ.”

About Shearwater’s Fellow Travelers:
JM: Fellow Travelers wasn’t supposed to be a full-length record, so I’m a little surprised to admit that it’s my favorite Shearwater album so far.  Somehow it slipped under the door. It was meant to be a small thing, maybe a home-recorded EP, to release between Animal Joy and the next full-length (for which we’re in the studio right now).  But it took on a life of its own.  Re-imagining and renovating songs by the bands we’ve traveled with—with assistance from the bands themselves—was like leafing through a scrapbook, and brought back the highs and lows of a decade of touring, from dives in Oklahoma and squats in Slovenia to the Fillmore West, the Bataclán, and the MGM Grand…(read more at Sub Pop).