63 replies to this topic

[ryan]

Not sure how well known these guys are. I really know nothing about them at all, but this album is fucking great.

The same kids who were all over the Brother Kite should find something to like here. It's a darker affair, but there are similar moments of gorgeousness that'll knock you on your ass. Also, much like the Brother Kite, the Beach Boys thing is going to lead every review. I'm liking this trend a whole fucking lot.



Says it better than I could...

The Besnard Lakes Are The Dark Horse CD / LP (JAG106, released: 02/20/07)

Rich with Beach Boys style harmonies, Roy Orbison reverbs and orchestra, Pink Floyd's pacing and Freddy Mercury's falsetto, The Besnard Lakes Are The Dark Horse is a luxurious foray into sound and music. This is the second record by The Besnard Lakes, Montrealers by way of Western Canada. Their independently released previous record, Volume I, came out in 2004, and it was noticed by critics but was largely overlooked by the public at large. On both records, The Besnard Lakes have shown that they are masters of finely-honed experimental pop songs that invoke the eerie Lynchian setting as aided and abetted by the music of Julee Cruise. But, on The Besnard Lakes Are The Dark Horse, the band throws into the mix a mad dash of Fleetwood Mac proportioned swagger and ambition. Not so incidentally, the Besnard Lakes have created a masterpiece that will resonate within all quarters, amongst critics, casual and not-so-casual rock listeners, garden variety pop fans and headphone junkies.

The Besnard Lakes Are The Dark Horse was recorded by Jace Lasek at the Breakglass Studios (whose production credits include Wolf Parade, Islands, Sunset Rubdown and Stars, amongst others) with his wife and band member, Olga Goreas. The other members of The Besnard Lakes, Steve Raegele, Nicole Lizée, and Kevin Laing, contributed as well. Nicole wrote dark string and horn parts, Steve wrote dark guitar solos, Kevin, dark drumming. Also joining in on the making of this record would be George Donoso III from The Dears, Chris Seligman from Stars, Sophie Trudeau from Godspeed/Silver Mt. Zion and Jonathan Cummins from Bionic/Doughboys.

As an interesting aside, the completion of the album seems to have conjured a bizarre series of unexplained events. When the six-person live band, that includes Lasek, Goreas, Raegele, Lizée, Laing and third guitarist Richard White, began performing this new material (usually accompanied by a five person choir, French horn, flute, and violins), strange things began to happen. During the quietest section in the song 'Disaster,' a bartender dropped a load of dishes onto the floor. On another occasion, while opening for Wolf Parade, during the same quiet section in 'Disaster,' the front-of-house console actually turned off (!) then on again creating a thunderous crack throughout the theatre. And Kevin Laing, (drummer) suffered second degree burns on his face the day after completing drum tracks for ...The Dark Horse. Coincidence? Maybe. This is The Dark Horse; this is The Besnard Lakes...

http://www.sendspace.com/file/6jod6j

(fresh link as of 02/20)

[solace]

just started listening to it over the weekend, but i'm feelin' this disc as well. there's a nice article on them in the new Magnet as well

[jasmine]

I read the title as "Barenaked Ladies".

[undo]

Not another horse album! I'll check out a song or two if anyone has some choice cuts. I just don't want to fish yet another whole disc since I've got at least a dozen that I haven't even listened to yet.

[solace]

I read the title as "Barenaked Ladies".

i did exactly the same thing on the forum i d/l it from

[ryan]

I'll check out a song or two if anyone has some choice cuts.

Instead of two, I'll just go for one seven minute track.

http://www.sendspace.com/file/h9usip

"Because Tonight"

[chingram]

i'm likin this so far...

[DrJimmy]

i am downloading. will file a report soon.

[Jay]

You had me at Brother Kite.

[Sickpup]

This is a good album, ryan, but I'm not hearing the brother kite at all. floyd's there for sure, as is, unfortunately, the jagjaguwar pedigree (inaccessible much?). i can admire this album from a distance, but i can't really see immersing myself in it. too heavy on aesthetic, not enough emphasis on songwriting.

[Saskadelphia]

So is this band named after the Saskatchewan lake of the same name? Cos that's all I think of when I see the name.

[ryan]

This is a good album, ryan, but I'm not hearing the brother kite at all. floyd's there for sure, as is, unfortunately, the jagjaguwar pedigree (inaccessible much?). i can admire this album from a distance, but i can't really see immersing myself in it. too heavy on aesthetic, not enough emphasis on songwriting.

You don't think the vocals strike the same Beach Boys chord as the Brother Kite? It's not constant, nor do I think the music is very similar, but the vocals seem undeniable to me.

So is this band named after the Saskatchewan lake of the same name? Cos that's all I think of when I see the name.

I see that some of their stuff was recorded in Montreal, so that sounds about right.

[Sickpup]

You don't think the vocals strike the same Beach Boys chord as the Brother Kite? It's not constant, nor do I think the music is very similar, but the vocals seem undeniable to me.

well, he may be attempting the brian wilson vocal thing at times, but he can't carry it through like boutwell.

[ryan]

Ehhh, I've only given it two listens. I'll have to spend some more time with it. I think the approaches are a little different. The Besnard Lakes dude seems to concentrate more on mood and bust out the apex gliding stuff less often.

[mouthbreather]

I read the title as "Barenaked Ladies".

So did I!
Or at least a dyslexic version.

[ryan]

I upped a fresh copy in my first post for anyone who was having issues with Rapidshare.

[b*derty]

I read the title as "Barenaked Ladies".

thank god, i did too.
could really go for some "maybe you should drive right about now"

[DrJimmy]

a couple of very good songs on this, and a couple just drag. nice sounds. edit: on second listen, i like it more. doesn't drag. actually, this is pretty great, i like it a lot.

[ryan]

Hey -- it's been validated!

The Besnard Lakes
Are the Dark Horse
[Jagjaguwar; 2007]
Rating: 8.2

As the title of their second album makes plain, the Besnard Lakes are indeed the dark horses of a Montreal indie rock community that has consumed so many column inches in the music press over the past three years, a band that's often stood on the periphery of greatness-- they opened the Unicorns' 2004 North American tour, while singer/guitarist Jace Lasek's Break Glass Studio produced Wolf Parade's Apologies to the Queen Mary and Sunset Rubdown's Shut Up I Am Dreaming-- but never tasted it themselves. Though it's not as if the Besnard Lakes were unfairly denied their due, having released a gauzy 2003 debut that was heavy on languorous shoegazer jangle/drone, but low on personality and vigor.
The Dark Horse shares that album's deliberate sense of pacing, precious attention to detail and hermetic sound-world atmosphere; the difference here is that almost every song builds to a crucial moment where the Besnards bravely step out of the shadows, and in the process, transform from being a merely good band to a great one. And just as the individual tracks ascend to their own internal peaks, so too does the eight-song sequence as a whole, which means patience is certainly a virtue here: Opener "Disaster" begins as a swell of forlorn falsettos and weepy strings (courtesy of in-house arranger Nicole Lizee and moonlighting Godspeed violinist Sophie Trudeau) that yields to a slumberous chorus of Brian Wilson harmonies; "For Agent 13" is all slow-dissolving, ladies-and-gentleman-we-are-floating-in-Spiritualized tremolos and mournful coos that sound like they're coming from a castrated Sigur Rós.

It's not until the third track, "And You Lied to Me", that The Dark Horse really achieves lift-off, and not without some great effort: the song seems to be deliberately working against its itself with its Floydian glide, oddly timed drum rolls at the chorus and frequent pauses filled in with strange, indecipherable murmurs. But finally, at the 4:56, we hit pay dirt: after a brief stop, the drums kick in and guitarist Steve Raegele and guest Jonathan Cummins (ex of the Doughboys, currently of Bionic) blast into a glorious two-way duel worthy of its own planetarium laser show. And then instead of coming down, the Besnards turn it up another notch thanks to bassist/Lacek's belle Olga Goreas' star turn on "Devastations", a hellacious, fuck-the-man screen delivered in 70s-smooth girly harmonies that provide an uncanny contrast to song's monstrous psych-metal groove and-- oh yes-- climactic three-way drum solo.

Together, these two songs form the front half of The Dark Horse's awesome middle stretch, but their playful bombast is effectively counterbalanced by the two songs that follow: "Because Tonight" is the album's most moving performance, a swaying space-rock ballad that intensifies into a beautifully bawling chorus; "Ride the Rails" is its most foreboding, with a circular bass riff and ominous violin inflections that lend it an ominous allure. It's also the song that best exemplifies Lacek's recurring lyrical strategy of trading off between World War II-era imagery and the present tense, with verses told through the eyes of a desperate drifter ("Gotta find a better to go on") and a chorus ("my father rides the rails") that shifts the perspective to a contemporary third-person telling. So it figures that the one song with an identifiably modern setting-- Brooklyn set piece "On Bedford and Grand"-- is the one that ultimately breaks The Dark Horse's dreamlike spell, an amiable but uneventful fuzz-pop exercise on which the Besnards come off as just another band of shoegaze revivalists.

But as sprightly Beach Boys pastiche "Cedric's War" gallops triumphantly to the finish line, you realize what's really remarkable about The Dark Horse: that for all its epic intimations and interstellar overdriving, the album still clocks in at a lean 45 minutes. Clearly, the Besnard Lakes are the product of a generation that remembers when their favorite albums used to fit perfectly on one side of a C90. But they've retrofitted classic-rock grandeur to indie-rock dimensions and forged their own special niche-- space-rock that's down to Earth.

-Stuart Berman, February 20, 2007

[norton]

Yer don't wanna re-up that link there, do ya buddy???