The Besnard Lakes don’t make things easy for them­selves, pub­lic­i­ty wise. The new album which launched on Jan­u­ary 2021, The Besnard Lakes are The Last of the Great Thun­der­storm Warn­ings isn’t a title that fits neat­ly into social media posts, as I’m sure they know. But the Cana­di­an out­fit don’t par­tic­u­lar­ly care – noth­ing is going to spoil the integri­ty of this new work, whether we’re talk­ing about the album title or the music. It’s how the band have always done things – slight­ly por­ten­tous, ele­ments of psych and prog, and a fierce­ly inde­pen­dent spir­it. Just call­ing the album Warn­ings! may bet­ter suit a Word­Press head­line – but it would­n’t fit with the Besnards’ vision.

There was a wob­bly moment when it looked like the band were going to call it quits, after leav­ing their label in 2016. For­tu­nate­ly they did the oppo­site and with a move to Full Time Hob­by, they seem to have found a per­fect fit, giv­ing them space and time to flower, and focus on what is mean­ing­ful to them.

That is some­thing that was so impor­tant with this release. We’re talk­ing a dou­ble album, with no com­pro­mis­es. And The Besnards have pro­duced a superb, gor­geous piece of work, prob­a­bly their finest. They feel like a band evolv­ing into what they want to be, tak­ing their time, adding a more exper­i­men­tal feel – this is the Besnards doing things exact­ly on their terms.

This work fea­tures nine tracks with a pro­found theme that con­tem­plates death in all its stages, from the dark­ness of dying, through all those stages of grief and then even­tu­al­ly find­ing the light on the oth­er side. Near Death is the title of the first side. Death, After Death, and Life fol­low. It’s a jour­ney into (and back from) the brink: fol­low­ing the sto­ry of the Besnard Lakes’ own odyssey but also a remem­brance of oth­ers’, espe­cial­ly the death of vocal­ist and song­writer Jace Lasek’s father in 2019.

That all-impor­tant open­ing num­ber con­dens­es the mood of the album into one for­mi­da­ble track. Black­strap unfurls slow­ly, lux­u­ri­at­ing in lumi­nous vocals, and those trade­mark lush chord changes. The tale of some­one climb­ing a moun­tain, search­ing for a lost love is inject­ed with more poignan­cy by the insis­tent sound of an old-school tele­phone ring­ing in the back­ground. The phone remains unan­swered, inject­ing a jar­ring note – this is the raw emo­tion of loss. The lack of con­clu­sion, the premise of for­ev­er search­ing is a con­cept that affects us all deeply. My own father died of Covid in Jan­u­ary 2021 and this track affects me deeply every time.

Fol­low­ing on is Rain­drops, the first sin­gle which dropped to pos­i­tive reviews in Octo­ber – this is a stat­uesque, shim­mer­ing work with a much-need­ed springi­ness to it, after the doomy pow­er of its pre­de­ces­sor. Our Heads Our Hearts on Fire Again (the sec­ond sin­gle with video) stands out as one of the most strik­ing tracks with its del­i­cate vocals, Beach Boys-style rich har­monies and euphor­ic feel. It’s a mul­ti-lay­ered anthemic track will sound great live.

Act­ing like a mark­er as the album starts to approach its con­clu­sion is the mes­meris­ing New Rev­o­lu­tion which announces itself with a drum beat and a dis­tinct­ly trib­al qual­i­ty. The drums, the bass, and a mix of swirling lay­ers mesh togeth­er – it’s an ethe­re­al num­ber with an aura of pos­i­tiv­i­ty, send­ing a mes­sage that says, ‘every­thing is going to be alright’.

The clos­er is Last of the Great Thun­der­storm Warn­ings itself: the sprawl­ing two-part 17-minute track seems to stretch out into the dis­tance, an unhur­ried land­scape with that dis­tant thun­der rum­bling and wind sweep­ing through a wild land­scape. The sec­ond part is an extend­ed and haunt­ing sec­tion, a peace­ful and spir­i­tu­al track, a fit­ting finale to the tur­moil and dra­ma in this long-await­ed album.

THE BESNARD LAKES ARE THE LAST OF THE GREAT THUNDERSTORM WARNINGS : release date Jan­u­ary 29 via Full Time Hob­by
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