“Arctic Shark”

Quilt came out of Boston at the end of the 2000s. Anna Fox Rochinski, Shane Butler and Taylor McVay met as visual art students at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, and John Andrews, who had opened every show on a 2009 tour, later took over the drums from McVay. Their self-titled debut came out on Mexican Summer in November 2011. On 8 October 2013 the label premiered “Arctic Shark” as the first single from the second album, Held in Splendor, due in January, and released it as a 7” with “As We Follow” on the B-side at the end of the month.

The album was made in a month. The trio spent the winter rehearsing new songs in a garage in Charlestown, brought each other demos of songs written alone for the first time, and in April 2013 moved into the studio beneath Mexican Summer’s offices in Brooklyn, with Jarvis Taveniere of Woods producing and Al Carlson engineering. By Butler’s account they worked ten hours a day, six days a week. They invited friends to add saxophone, violin, cello and steel guitar, and Butler credited the studio, the demos and knowing each other better as musicians for how it came together.

“Arctic Shark” opens the record and is over in 2:37. Rochinski sings lead, and the label described cooed harmonies behind her, what it called a sitar solo after each verse, and an outro that fades into piano and drones. The lyrics pass a harbour full of grief, a horse in a pepper tree and a lighthouse floating on the sea before reaching the title animal, living free in “the coldest part of the eastern sea”. Stereogum found it warm and relaxing despite the cold imagery. Its video, shot and edited by Merideth Hillbrand and Brandon Andrew, puts the trio at a surreal picnic, and Diffuser found the song and the clip sunny for such a chilly title.

The band played the song on the road that autumn, around the Northeast, at Mexican Summer’s fifth-anniversary show and at a CMJ showcase. Held in Splendor came out on 28 January 2014, and Pitchfork singled out Rochinski’s voice on the opener. Quilt made one more album with Taveniere, Plaza (2016), and have not released an album of new songs since. “Arctic Shark” is the short, bright way into their most worked-on record, by a band that had just learned to write apart and arrange together.