The Besnard Lakes: The Besnard Lakes Are the Ghost Nation

The Besnard Lakes have spent over two decades illuminating the frontiers of psychedelia with the kind of colours that few others have replicated. Through expansive songcraft built on emotional intensity, with very few missteps (if any at all), led by Jace Lasek and Olga Goreas, it’s made the Montreal five-piece one of the most trusted voices in independent music. Their combination of elusive, warm rushes of sound and almost-invisible phrases, often making them feel like shambolic magic rather than purveyors of carefully plotted neo-psychedelia.

Whether it be the world outside their orbit or strictly within it, The Besnard Lakes have always been well-versed on danger and destruction. Following their aptly titled 2021 release, …Are the Last of the Great Thunderstorm Warnings, on …Are the Ghost Nation, The Besnard Lakes find different ways to harness turmoil, subtlety dialling down their sound to maximise their messaging. And the results are grand.

While the world’s political unrest and the erosion of community are focal points throughout …Are the Ghost Nation¸ it’s the anxiety of life’s daily struggles that are equally telling (led by the exquisite Carried it All Around). Death and the aftermath for those left behind isn’t something new to the band, but with time and resilience in facing these eventualities, it makes the songs on …Are the Ghost Nation as cathartic and close to the bone as The Besnard Lakes have ever been.

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…Are the Ghost Nation begins with Calling Ghostly Nations. Gabriel Lambert and Sheenah Ko’s rolling vapour of synths and arpeggios, a setting for Goreas’ to emerge like a spectre from another world. It’s the most despondent opener The Besnard Lakes have delivered since Disaster, and in many ways, one could draw a straight line to it from here. Like a soundtrack to defeat and despair, so powerful, Calling Ghostly Nations would be just as fitting as an album closer; Lasek’s melodies, radiating with new light, as The Besnard Lakes charge out of the gates to remind us that after all these years, they remain at their transcendental best.

Most others would have peaked too early with such a moment, but on Chemin de la Baie, The Besnard Lakes maintain the level with ghostly echoes akin to a storm approaching in slow motion. As Lasek and Goreas trade verses that merge in majesty (“Float down to that darkness place / Your saddest face / In Monterey”), The Besnard Lakes are sunken in new depths of gloom.

Exchanging darkness for the whimsical, sun dappled yawn of its namesake, The Besnard Lakes swiftly lift themselves out of it with the woozy, gently spun In Hollywood. Led by Lambert’s knotty riff and ending with Ko’s spiralling synths, the middle section finds Lasek’s Orbison-inspired melodies seep through the speakers, saturating the room in vitality.  

And it doesn’t subside with the piano-led Pontiac Spirits. Like a swooping rainbow coalition of sound, Kevin Laing’s thumping drums and Goreas’ hypnotic bass lines see The Besnard Lakes take us into new corners of the fantasy world Mercury Rev have guided us through for the last 30 years.

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Elsewhere, the haunted transmission of Battle Lines unfolds like Floydian balladry. A dispatch between lost souls, it’s packed with a pathos that feels more like running through a war zone (“Don’t wanna leave without your love / With frozen tears”).

And The Clouds are Casting Shadows from the Sunlight and Give Us Hope Our Dominion don’t lighten the mood, as life’s uncertainties are projected with a wider scope. On the former – initially conceived when Laing first met and recorded with Lasek and Goreas in 2003 – the “cryptic creature and silent seeker” underlines the vagueness and anxieties that inspire …Are the Ghost Nation.

It makes The Besnard Lakes’ seventh full-length release tailored for these times. Eight sweeping emotional vistas that stack up with the band’s best work, The Besnard Lakes present a panoramic view of life and its unbridled complexities. But in their own way, they manage to provide a flicker of light through the darkness.

The Besnard Lakes Are the Ghost Nation is out Friday via Full Time Hobby. Purchase from Bandcamp.