Great Lake Swimmers preview

Great Lake Swimmers
Schubas, Chicago
Saturday, June 30, 2007

From an audio standpoint, it might feel like Great Lake Swimmers will have just blown into town on Saturday.

There’s art for art’s sake, but there’s not languidity for languidity’s sake — it doesn’t work out semantically. The idea of being lazy (at best “effortless”) for its own gain flies in the face of those words’ connotations. But somehow GLS bellweather Tony Dekker — if ever someone shouldn’t have been named “Tony” — has slowly built a career on the sonic waft. Their debut album garnered comparisons to Red House Painters, who seem like Mitch Ryder in comparison.

A semblance of pain over takes their third album, Ongiara (Nettwerk), to dismiss any hints of ennui. Far from the bellyaching of a self-styled busker or drifter, Dekker is tired and just wants to sit. “I just want to break even/I just want to passs on through,” he sings on “Catcher Song,” reprising the sentiment on a later song, “If love is a war/I won’t have anymore.” Like fine painters, banjoist Erik Arensen and drummer Colin Huebert create an overcast, pastoral backdrop with ease (what else?), giving Dekker room to probe his thoughts without any hope of interruption. Ongiara is so named for a ferry in Toronto Harbor, though it seems none of Great Lake Swimmers is on the ship — they can only imagine and watch from the pier.

Kyle Andrews and Sean Hayes open.

— Steve Forstneger

Click here to download “Your Rocky Spine.”

Category: Stage Buzz, Weekly