Tag Archives: The Besnard Lakes

The Besnard Lakes: People of the Sticks

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The list of albums I’m looking forward to in 2013 is quickly filling up, topped by news of a new one from Montreal’s the Besnard Lakes, who craft epic walls of sound that can suck you in with their deliberate pace before you realize you’ve been floored by the grandeur of it all.

A Besnard Lakes release feels special, at least for me. They release albums once every two to three years, careful to ensure there is some heft/importance with every record. Nothing is watered down and there’s a certain gravity to the music, far out as the ideas may sometimes be. In premiering a song, “People of the Sticks,” at NPR, the band said of the new album: “Themes of personal loss alongside Millenial ennui weave their way into the narrative of the record. 2012 has come and gone and the world still rotates on its ever precarious axis prompting the question: What next?”

In typical Besnard fashion, the title of the new album, Until In Excess, Imperceptible UFO (out April 2 on Jagjaguwar), reads like a non sequiter – some secret code to crack.

As Jeff Weiss perfectly puts it at Passion of the Weiss: ” … but this is the thing about Besnard Lakes, they tap into some weird feeling of immensity. Spectral plains and fossil remains. Music to drive and dive to. I don’t even care whether they’re singing about spies or water slides. When the guitar crescendo and Olga Goreas’ plaintive wail start to combine, I am taken somewhere else entirely.”