Drink The Sea - Drink The Sea II (feat. Barrett Martin, Alain Johannes, Peter Buck & Duke Garwood) (2025) Hi-Res

Six month ago Peter Buck (R.E.M., the Minus 5) and Barrett Martin (Screaming Trees, Mad Season) unveiled the debut album from the Silverlites, their supergroup with the Black Crowes’ Rich Robinson and singer-songwriter Joseph Arthur. Now Buck and Martin are announcing another supergroup called Drink The Sea with Alain Johannes and Duke Garwood.

Johannes is a founding member of the band Eleven and plays in the supergroup Them Crooked Vultures with Josh Homme, John Paul Jones, and Dave Grohl for live performances. Duke Garwood is a British multi-instrumentalist with six studio albums and has collaborated with Mark Lanegan and the Orb.

It may seem an alien concept for some people, but being in a globally huge band can be tough going at times, the machine utterly taking over your life. Former R.E.M. guitarist Peter Buck has always seemed to sidestep that issue, his ability to create with others displaying a dazzling range of work that expresses an artistic freedom and an ability to flex his muscles in whatever way his muse leads him.

Certainly prolific, there’s always been a sense that his drive and focus has been informed by a real passion to make music, eschewing the commercial priorities that directs the business.

His latest project is ‘supergroup’ Drink The Sea and with the release of their eponymous debut album they’re ready to make their stamp on the world. Joining Buck are Barrett Martin (Screaming Trees, Mad Season), Alain Johannes (Eleven, Queens of the Stone Age), Duke Garwood (Mark Lanegan Band), percussionist Lisette Garcia, and bassist Abbey Blackwell, the blend of talent proving a very heady mix.

Certainly, they’ve been busy, the album a double disc collection with a total of twenty two tracks. For some, this may seem like too much too soon but you can’t for once question the authenticity here and if things just click, why not just let the tape roll.

In a day and age where music is more of a disposable commodity than ever and doom scrolling through thirty second TikTok clips is the norm, it’s heartening to hear an album where the focus is on the music and it’s not being restricted to a half hour, cookie cutter product.

The whole is a mesmerizing blend of influences and styles that mixes jazz, rock, world music, folk and pop into one kaleidoscopic whole. Whilst this is something that remains utterly cool throughout, you get the sense of everyone just letting loose and having fun with it, all the hard work and attention to detail crafting the album producing something that appears on the surface deceptively laid back.

With each member of the ensemble playing a dazzling array of different instruments, the ranges of tone and colour available proves to be an almost endless palette with which to build layers of sonic tapestries.

Kicking off with the achingly cool ‘Shaking for the Snakes’ where hazy jazz is shot through with sparkling fireworks, the journey begins as it intends to carry on.

Highlights are many but the Doors meets Ravi Shankar exoticism of ‘Land of Spirits’, a dreamy ‘Embers’ and ‘Bembe for Two’ that sounds how Steely Dan might if they’d been smoking unfiltered cigarettes in a Memphis bar are very hard to beat. Dip in anywhere and you’ll find a treat, be it the acoustic drenched ‘Mouth of the Whale’ or the constantly shifting and sun dappled rhythms of ‘Rose Crested Sky’ and when the final notes of the ethereal ‘Butterfly’ melt away the only option is to hit the ‘play’ button again.

If only all supergroup albums were this good. A truly inventive and vital purchase.