Shawn James releases third album in Shapeshifter trilogy, ‘The Hawk’

Album artwork for Shawn James’ The Hawk

The final EPs in Shawn James and the Shapeshifter’s trilogy of concept albums was released earlier this month.

The Hawk, featuring five new original songs by the Fayetteville band, is now available on Bandcamp. CD copies of the record will be available sometime in February.

The album features James primarily on piano instead of guitar, in contrast to previous releases in the series The Wolf (released in February 2013), and The Bear (released in June 2013). It also marks the third album released in under a year by the prolific local songwriter.

The Hawk was recorded by local engineer Adam Putman at his Insomniac Studios. Interestingly, all three EPs were recorded in different environments by different engineers. (We talked to James back in June about recording The Bear in a solar-powered cabin in the woods near Ponca.

We embedded the three records together below so that you can appreciate them as a group, but also as individual embodiments of the animals they are named for (the mysterious wolf, the raucous bear, and the majestic hawk). You can definitely get a sense of the personality of each record when you hear them together.

Hear for yourself below. Nice work, gentlemen.

The Wolf

The Bear

The Hawk