Some American

the besnard lakes are releasing a new album

One of 2007’s sleeper hits, The Besnard Lakes’ The Besnard Lakes Are The Dark Horse, was a dense, orchestral, rollicking, and often epic record driven by the craft of singer/bassist, Olga Goreas and guitarist/vocalist, Jace Lasek. Those two, owners of a production studio in Montreal and, it is so interesting to note and compare to other similar Canadian pairings, a married couple, put all of their arrangement and knob-twiddling talent to wonderful use, and the end result was one of those great pleasures of art and music: a pair of artists swinging for the fences and creating an imperfect but glorious mess. Combining the grandiosity of some of their Canadian peers with a grittiness that keeps their songs from flying off the grid - think soaring melodies and crunching power chords, Wilsonesque harmonies, sonorous drums, and wailing distortion - The Besnard Lakes are heavy.

And the Besnard Lakes are coming back. This blog in particular has been anticipating with excitement their follow-up to the aforementioned record, officially their second long player. On March 9th, 2010, The Besnard Lakes Are The Roaring Night will be released in the USA by Jagjaguwar, everyone’s favorite little record label (and if it is not, shame shame). And it sounds most promising. The Besnardiers are moving into the mysterious waters of the concept album, as this one will spin a tale of spies, double agents, novelists and aspiring rock gods: perhaps the love child of Roberto Bolaño and Robert Ludlum put to music.

From an aural perspective, things sound equally intriguing. The band used a vintage 1968 Neve germanium mixing console to record the album, the very same one used on Led Zeppelin’s magnum opus, Physical Graffiti, to accentuate even further their ‘classic’ wall of sound tone. According to their label, things will sound more atmospheric and with more “drones”. Hopefully those linguistic contortions do not necessarily mean a complete free-fall into boring, proggy territory, as The Besnard Lakes Are The Dark Horse was so delightfully and sufficiently atmospheric, but suffered no lack of clarity in the assembly of its many parts.

Either way, The Besnard Lakes Are The Roaring Night should be one of 10’s most quietly anticipated releases. The first single from it, “Albatross”, will see the light of day as a 12” on February 9th, with a bonus B-side. Check out the track listing and other tidbits over on the band’s site on the label. The Besnard Lakes are ready to put us through a rough night.