Geologist & D.S. - A Shaw Deal (Album Review)

 

Geologist & D.S. - A Shaw Deal (2025)

My copy: 2025 press by Drag City

Avey Tare’s got Pullhair Rubeye, Down There and most recently 7’s among others. Panda Bear has Tomboy, Person Pitch and even the new Sinister Grift on the horizon among others. Deakin’s even got his own Sleep Cycle. All this is to say that Animal Collective fans have been looking to Brian “Geologist” Weitz for his own solo effort for years. 2025 turned out to be the year we would finally get the long awaited debut, though it is technically a unique collaborative effort between Weitz and friend/guitarist Douglas Shaw, whose COVID inspired Instagram jam sessions serve as the basis for the record itself. 

Weitz explains that the record is meant more as a gift to his friend, whose guitar playing served as valuable inspiration in the face of a pandemic. And yet A Shaw Deal couldn’t feel more explicitly Geologist; as if the multi-media manipulator behind some of Animal Collective’s weirdest sounds was just waiting for the right subject with which to create such a wholly unique experience. Shaw Deal was created by rearranging Shaw’s guitar via samplers, with percussive loops spewing forth like hot steel turned to crackling, streaming ribbons by some autonomous and rebelling machine on lead single “Route 9 Falls.”

Bits and bobs of guitar stretch and float through existential portals, akin to fellow mischief makers The Books albeit in a far more amorphous and interpretive form. There is as much eloquence and introspection as there is slow unfurling horror (mounting dissonances and unsettling string groans on “Ripper Called” come to mind). 

It is almost as if Weitz set out to specifically challenge himself with these parameters, perhaps purposefully retreating from what a typical Animal Collective fan might anticipate from him. What takes shape on Shaw Deal lends itself to the transparent apparition that adorns its album cover; in the sense that the music here is at times loose, transcendental, otherworldly and outside of Weitz’s usual tonal sensibilities with AnCo even from the early days of Danse Manatee. 

While it shines in originality, from the socially transplantable chaos of “Petticoat” to the alien polka syncopations of “Knuckles To Nostrils,” Shaw Deal does lack the melodic gravitas of a Panda Bear hook or the emotional weight of an Avey Tare yelp. Yet where many might view the debut Geologist full length record as lacking in a traditional appeal, Weitz has chosen to instead develop a whole new world in “limiting” himself to samples of his friend’s work. A Shaw Deal can be challenging, perhaps a bit overstimulating at times, but it stands as a genius entrance for Geologist that crucially defines the man behind the moniker as someone with very special and self-defining ideas. 

Weighing in at just under 30 minutes, Shaw Deal  is a brief encounter, but one that has me eagerly awaiting whatever may come next.