The Besnard Lakes Preview
The Besnard Lakes
Schubas, Chicago
Thursday, March 29, 2007
Layers-deep Montreal indie rock outfit The Besnard Lakes flirt with the Canadian border on their second album.
Hip Montreal bands, which are now too numerous to list, have made their marks with slight quirks that leave us to embrace Canada in all of its bilingual, free-health-care splendor. Never mind any one of them could be American — does anything define “Canadian” other than “not being American”? — but by virtue of their nationality they are granted a certain amount of cultural largesse. It’s never ‘quirky band.’ It’s always ‘quirky Canadian band.”
But here come The Besnard Lakes mucking up the whole distinction on The Besnard Lakes Are The Dark Horse (Jagjaguwar). On an album brimming with ingenuity and unbridled performances, two dominant influences spring forth, and they both come from our side of the line. The first , yeah, O.K., is just south of the border from Duluth, with Low. But the second, and the source of The Dark Horse‘s striding vocal harmonies, had to be acquired deep down the California coast in the form of The Beach Boys.
It’s such a striking combination — warm, hopeful youth versus frigid, impending doom — it’s hard not to be blindsided by the rest of the ingredients marching across the plains. Critics of their live performances have lamented how the songs spin out of control and end up awash in cacophonous guitar symphonies, and the stepping-off points aren’t very well concealed here. But the glory of it is the alienation never occurs on Dark Horse, which constantly returns to its core elements.
“On Bedford And Grand” begins its descent with a bubbling outro of wah-wah, chanted vocals, and a steamrolling rhythm track that seems to increase in volume and decrease in stability. But before the floor caves in, “Cedric’s War” returns to the B-Boys harmonies that open the album on “Disaster.” “For Agent 13” uses a hovering falsetto that begs “My baby don’t go” while the band switches dials on the radio to figure out how to attack the song, finally arriving at it in full force and going up in a fabulous explosion. When it cuts out, “And You Lied To Me” falls into an R&B beat Isaac Hayes would have taken into another direction; the Lakes drive up a ramp to a majestic crescendo before lining up the Low sequence, stop, and repeat.
It’s so sloppy and powerful, it can only be American.
Dirty On Purpose will open.
— Steve Forstneger
Click here to download “And You Lied To Me.”
Category: Stage Buzz, Weekly
