The Besnard Lakes – The Besnard Lakes are the Roaring Night
I don’t know if it’s supposed to be taken this way, but this record is great fun. The otherwordly falsetto vocals and slightly over the top guitar melodrama just give it an air of exuberance.
It also seems to have the right balance between self-indulgence and discipline; it may sound a mite proggy in places, but it’s all still pretty tightly put together, and there’s barely any freeform noodling. A little like early Interpol and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, the rhythm may not seem complicated, but it thumps away consistently through everything, anchoring the whole album extremely well.
Having listened to it a good dozen or so times through I still feel a little ambivalent about the second half of The Besnard Lakes are the Roaring Night, however. It seems to lose pace and just a little bit of urgency. There’s almost a sprightliness to the first half, despite the heaviness of the noise, but later on it seems to become a little leaden, wich is a shame, because every time I listen to it I feel like I am building up to absolutely love the album, only to sort of deflate half way through.
Over the course of an hour this album drifts from boisterous, somewhat epic indie rock to what I suppose I would call a kind of increasingly moody post-rock, if I were forced to try and put it into words. And consequently it seems to lose its momentum, just at the wrong time.
The Besnard Lakes – Like the Ocean, Like the Innocent Pt.2: The Innocent
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The Besnard Lakes – Glass Printer
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1. It happened to me last Tuesday although that was the first time for quite a while. The doctor said I should be okay after a course of physio.
2. That bit in ‘the name of the rose’ with Christian Slater and the peasant girl.
3. Pilot whale, although I’m not very proud. It was my neighbour’s fault, he was faroese and he brought it back from his holidays.
4. Either the bit with the dress or the removal of Reminisce Part 1 from the director’s cut. Probably the dress.
5. When a friend wanted to see his ex but needed to avoid her dad (and we were only 16, all living at home) he realised the best answer was to borrow a ladder from me and take it to her house so he could knock on her bedroom window at 1 in the morning. I was woken by the police at about 1.30am, who’d picked him up walking down the highstreet with a twenty foot extending ladder, and asked me to verify his ludicrous story, which I did. They let him go.