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 well 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. 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: took all the time they need­ed to con­ceive, com­pose, record and mix their new work. The Besnard Lakes are The Last of the Great Thun­der­storm Warn­ings is a dou­ble album, with no com­pro­mis­es. And they have pro­duced a superb, gor­geous piece of work, prob­a­bly their finest. They haven’t exact­ly changed their sound, but they’ve slowed things down when they want and added an exper­i­men­tal feel here and there; this is the Besnards doing things exact­ly on their terms.

The new album fea­tures nine tracks that con­tem­plate the dark­ness of dying and 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: 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. There’s the insis­tent sound of an old-school tele­phone ring­ing in the back­ground which goes unan­swered and it injects an unset­tling note.

Fol­low­ing on is Rain­drops, the first sin­gle which dropped to pos­i­tive reviews in Octo­ber – this is a stat­uesque, shim­mer­ing work. Our Heads Our Hearts on Fire Again (the sec­ond sin­gle which also fea­tures a video) stands out as one of the most strik­ing tracks with its del­i­cate vocals and its Beach Boys-style rich har­monies. This mul­ti-lay­ered anthemic track is going to 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. 

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. This is a peace­ful and spir­i­tu­al track, a fit­ting finale to the tur­moil and dra­ma in this long-await­ed album. 

LIVESTREAM TOUR VIA NOONCHORUS WITH SHOWS ON FEBRUARY 5, MARCH 6 AND APRIL 3.

NEW ALBUM ‘THE BESNARD LAKES ARE THE LAST OF THE GREAT THUNDERSTORM WARNINGS’  OUT JANUARY 29 VIA FULL TIME HOBBY
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