The Besnard Lakes
Are The Dark Horse
Jagjaguwar/Spunk


Recording engineer Jace Lasek (Wolf Parade, Islands) and wife Olga Goreas are at the core of Canadian band The Besnard Lakes, a sextet assisted here by members from The Dears, Stars, Bionic and A Silver Mt. Zion. This is a big-sounding record, from the reverb-soaked vocal harmonies to the grand guitars and booming orchestration. Only the first couple of minutes of opener Disaster present anything less than a full-band production. This nakedness and fragility soon grows into a magnanimous explosion of dense guitars and drums, brass, reed and string arrangements, soaring male/female vocals. The mood is set thus for a 45-minute rock opera.

The Lasek/Goreas songwriting team (assisted on three tracks by Nicole LizŽe) proves impressive, the songs echoing classic period Fleetwood Mac injected with space rock swagger as on Devastation, which features three guitarists, three bass players, three drummers, and a choir, no less. At the front is Goreas' illuminating vocal, which elsewhere sticks like sap to Lasek's falsetto, her disembodied whisper nestling too in the cracks of several intros. The tempo is slow to medium throughout, elegant, and deep with bass resonance, LizŽe's simmering string arrangement ensconcing Rides The Rails and Because Tonight. The pacing of the vocals, coupled with the unhurried surges of melody, makes these songs even more gratifying.

An album so ripe with classic-sounding vocal interplay and colossal production might find one asking, "How much is enough?" 'The Besnard Lakes Are The Dark Horse' as album title is perhaps misleading. Far from it, this collection is over the top, and it revels in the fact. Here, for the most part, high ambition sounds sweet.

Lenin Simos