Weekly Release Spotlight: The Besnard Lakes
Posted on 3/14/2010
The Besnard Lakes
[Jagjaguwar]
From the swirl of warm red and orange album art and liquid feedback to sweetly harmonized falsetto vocals, The Besnard Lakes explore the frontier of indie pop with their second album, “The Besnard Lakes Are The Roaring Night.” Similar in title to their previous release “The Besnard Lakes Are The Dark Horse,” the Montreal-based husband and wife duo assert confidence in their ability to represent a journey both visually and aurally. Through songs defined well enough to guide listeners while leaving ample space for the introspective experience that shoegaze so often provides, Jace Lasek and Olga Goreas return from the night with a promising message about their musical future.
Recording at Lasek’s studio must have removed a great deal of the time constraints many artists face when making an album, as reflected in the extensive layers of effects-laden instruments. The straightforward songwriting style and overdriven tube amplifiers provide comforting shag carpet-like ground cover in a dauntingly massive room of unfamiliar sound. After floating on a cushion of aquatic reverb guitar and electric organ surrounded by Goreas’ haunting vocals, “Land and Living Skies Pt. 2: The Living Skies” gives way to a harmonized guitar solo driven by more stabilizing drums. Lasek, Goreas, and company remind their audience that there is in fact solid ground somewhere beneath their feet with the chugging “And This is What We Call Progress,” while ambient tunes like “Albatross” and “Light Up the Night” provide more of a bird’s eye view on the sonic landscape.
While a lot of epic instrumental music passes so ephemerally by, concerned more with generating an evocative portrait of the current moment, The Besnard Lakes generate subtle hooks that remain embedded in listeners’ minds. While the title presents a foreboding glimpse into a dark abyss, the story told through “The Besnard Lakes Are The Roaring Night” offers reassurance that the group has encountered the boundary between known and unknown. Their exploration has bred the discovery of new musical hybrids, and with a new, accessible album, widespread understanding is soon to follow.
Written by Alex Hamberger, Radio K volunteer.
Stream: The Besnard Lakes - Albatross