-=- SHGZ -=-
* Shoegaze * Indie * Post-Rock * Grunge * Dream Pop * Psych-Rock * Ethereal *
Artist..: The Besnard Lakes
Album...: A Coliseum Complex Museum
GENRE....: Indie
STYLE....: Indie Rock, Alternative Rock, Shoegaze
LABEL....: Jagjaguwar SCENE.....: 2016-03-05
BITRATE..: 239 kbps avg STORE.....: 2016-00-00
ENCODER..: LAME 3.98.4 -V0 TRACKS....: 8
SIZE.....: 66.85MB SOURCE....: CD
URL..: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Besnard_Lakes
- TRACKLIST
1 The Bray Road Beast 5:30
2 Golden Lion 3:48
3 Pressure Of Our Plans 5:22
4 Towers Sent Her To Sheets Of Sound 4:28
5 The Plain Moon 4:26
6 Necronomicon 3:40
7 Nightingale 5:08
8 Tungsten 4 - The Refugee 6:13
Total Playtime: 38:35
The first album by The Besnard Lakes that many American audiences heard was
2007Æs The Besnard Lakes Are the Dark Horse, a work with an eye-catching
cover featuring a horse engulfed in flames and a sound that was resolutely
hard to pin down. It wasnÆt their first album ù that would be 2003Æs
aptly-titled Volume 1 ù but it was a hell of an introduction. Noting the size
of the group and their fondness for epic arrangements, many reviewers opted
for a comparison to fellow Canadians Arcade Fire and Black Mountain. (That
they share a label with the latter likely didnÆt hurt, either.) But as the
years have gone on, neither comparison has held up particularly well.
While theyÆre not as self-consciously cosmic as the upstate New York band in
question, itÆs fair to say that The Besnard Lakes push some of the same
buttons as late-90s/early-00s Mercury Rev did on albums like DeserterÆs
Songs. ThereÆs the expansive sound, the occasional theatricality of the music
being played and the focus on ornate arrangements. A Coliseum Complex Museum
is their latest full-length, and these songs give a fine overview of the
groupÆs sound and its characteristics. ItÆs impossible to imagine a song like
ôThe Plain Moonö or opener ôThe Bray Road Beastö being heard in a more
stripped-down version. And the steady tempos at which many of these songs
proceed ù öNightingaleö is a particularly solid example ù seem to suggest a
train journey through a vast, mysterious landscape.
That mindset isnÆt exactly hurt by A Coliseum Complex Museum, which features
on its cover an image of a white sphere arising from a body of water. It may
well be a nod to The PrisonerÆs Rover, the strange guard device that
enveloped the bodies of would-be escapees in the paranoid science fiction
show in question. And when Jace LasekÆs voice heads into a falsetto, is
there, perhaps, a tinge of fear creeping in at the edges? ThereÆs certainly a
feeling of anxiety in the song titles here: song titles include
ôNecronomicon,ö ôThe Bray Road Beast,ö and ôPressure of Our Plans.ö And the
first lines sung on ôTowers Sent Her to Sheets of Sound,ö repeated again and
again, are ôIs there anybody out there?ö
Over a decade into playing together, The Besnard Lakes seem comfortable
carving out their own sonic space. And at their best, the results can be
evocatively stunning ù the way that ôThe Plain Moonö moves from a sinister
vamp into a blissed-out Brian Wilson homage and back again is dizzying in the
best way. Perhaps in the end itÆs best to just say that The Besnard Lakes
sound like themselves; theyÆve certainly found a way to refine their own
sound, and the jarring beauty that can be heard in A Coliseum Complex Museum
is a prime example of it.
*
Five albums into their Beach Boys-with-fuzz-and-feedback career, the Besnard
Lakes continue to conjure euphoria, underpinning octave-leaping,
pulse-quickening choruses with the churn and friction of effected guitars.
The band, formed around the husband and wife duo of Jace Lasek and Olga
Goreas, does nothing on A Coliseum Complex Museum that it hasnÆt before, but
there is also no let-up in joy.
ôGolden Lion,ö the single off a late 2015 EP, is a shot of transcendent,
arena-sized exultation, a hands-in-the-air finish of ôYou are the golden
lion/you are the golden lionö etc. reverberating in cathedral high sonic
spaces and, more importantly, in the giddy cavities of your chest. That the
song achieves this transport without giving up much of its literal meaning
(who, exactly, is a golden lion, and why do we care?) is a testament to its
gut level power. If you listen to rock music to feel good (or at least feel
better), this is your jam.
The Besnard Lakes have undergoe a bit of transformation themselves since
2013Æs Until in Excess, Imperceptible UFO, with founding guitarist Richard
White leaving the touring ensemble (though he still plays on three of these
tracks) and Robbie MacArthur joining. The basic wall-of-sound aesthetic
remains in place, however, the scrape of GoreasÆ bass, the thud of Kevin
LaingÆs drums undergirding a vaulting pedal-altered sound. You can catch both
guitarists in closing ôTungsten 4: the Refugeeö White squalling out of the
right speaker, MacArthur thundering from the left. The overall effect,
however, of ineluctable melody erupting from fuzz-crusted, feedback blurred
roar, is pretty much the same. This band stirs a noisy pot of rock sounds,
but vapors that escape smell delicious.
*
There are five musicians in the Besnard Lakes, but it sounds like some sort
of pop orchestra was on hand to record the group's fifth full-length album,
2016's A Coliseum Complex Museum. The scope of this music is vast, combining
the melodic angles of indie pop with the grand scale ambitions of prog rock,
and group founders Jace Lasek and Olga Goreas are determined to make the most
of it, filling every nook and cranny of these songs with banks of guitars,
keyboards, percussion, and massed vocals, until the music takes on the shape
of a vast ship at sea, moving deliberately but with a strong sense of purpose
through choppy waters in the chilly nighttime. And if that all sounds a bit
much, well, that's just how the Besnard Lakes do things, and they do them
well. A Coliseum Complex Museum doesn't just sound big, it makes genuine
melodic sense out of its multi-tracked aural landscapes (Lasek owns the
studio where they record, which makes their level of sonic perfectionism
affordable), and while the lyrics for the eight songs on hand don't really
cohere into a thematic whole, the recurring theme of people in transit fits
in with the music's broad sense of wanderlust. And as much as this music
towers over the listener, there's a modest humanity in Lasek's lead vocals
that helps this album keep one foot in the real world. A Coliseum Complex
Museum is further proof that the Besnard Lakes are a band with big ideas and
real vision, and just as importantly, they have the talent and focus to makes
those ideas into something worth hearing.
-=- SHGZ -=-
P.S.
** Thanks ***
*** BCC FNT IPC SSR ***
*** For Knowing Where The Music Is At ***
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