Shoegaze Tuesday Album Review Roundup: The Besnard Lakes, and Implodes
Around three years ago, back when my old radio show was in
its infancy, it was actually The Besnard Lakes that I can credit with the
advent of Shoegaze Tuesday.
In the early days of the show, when I was trying to play
less “weird stuff,” I opted to play “Albatross,” the first single from 2010’s The Besnard Lakes Are The Roaring Night,
because it walked the fine line between listener friendly and weird. As a big
fan of near rhyme, Shoegaze Tuesday was created in an effort to slowly ease the
people who listened to the show into a genre they were more than likely not
familiar with.
Hailing from Canada, The Besnard Lakes sound revolves around
the husband-wife duo at the front—Jace Laskek and Olga Goreas, both of who
share vocal duties. They pull from a variety of styles and sounds, but if you
had to put them into a genre, you could call them post-rock and/or shoegaze.
The band has a penchant for clunky album titles—Are The Roaring Night, Are The Dark Horse—and
their fourth LP is no exception: Until In
Excess, Imperceptible UFO, which honestly sounds like a Sufjan Steven song
title, was released last week courtesy of the Jagjaguwar label.
Since I don’t get paid to sit around and listen to records
and write these pithy reviews for this blog, occasionally I have to resort to
becoming somewhat familiar with a record by listening to it at my desk at
work—not the most optimal setting, but when it comes time to actually critique,
I will slap the headphones on and really pay attention.
I’ve listened to Until
In Excess quite a few times now, and my first impression is the same as my
most recent—it’s kind of boring. It starts out super promising, with a very
slow and dreamy Slowdive-esq track, “46 Satires.” The pacing already slows down
after that though, with “And Her Eyes Were Painted Golden,” a very ornate song
that relies on repetition, and airy multi-tracked vocals to disguise the fact
that it doesn’t go anywhere.
The album’s first single, “People of The Sticks,” starts out
with a nice squall of feedback, reminiscent to the guitar distortion on the
aforementioned “Albatross.” This song, too, suffers from the fact that doesn’t
go anywhere—it’s catchy, sure, but it’s also very forgettable.
“The Spectre” tries its hand at psychedelic-Beatle-esq pop,
with mixed results. It tries to sound big—and it is a big song. Actually, all of these songs are very
theatrical. “The Spectre” is weighed down by length—six and a half minutes—a lot
of it comes off as feeling forced.
The second half of the record (it’s only eight tracks) has
all the same issues as the first half—catchy songs, yet uninteresting to listen
to, and in the end, very forgettable.
Clocking in at around 45 minutes, every time I would listen
to this at work, there would be a moment when I was like, “This album is STILL
on?” and I would check to see what track I was on. It’s just a slow album—not
in a good way, like “Oh let me take my time with this and really listen,” but
more like, “Oh my god why isn’t this over yet.”
The Besnard Lakes are by no means one of my favorite bands.
I just happened to REALLY like one of their songs three years ago, and it
served as an introduction to their canon. I went back and sampled a little bit
of Are The Roaring Night, and while
it too has lengthy songs, some of which are divided into multiple parts, there
was an aggression to their playing, and a less-polished sound to the production
values. The songs also seem to be constructed around slightly more interesting
ideas.
Until in Excess is
by no means a terrible record. But it’s also not a great record. It falls into
some kind of gray, middle of the road area. It’s listenable and palatable, but
rarely memorable—it all too easily becomes just music to have on in the
background, even if you are fighting hard to pay attention.
(oh shit this house is lookin' real spooky)
On their second record, Recurring
Dream, Implodes also combine elements of shoegaze and psychedlia, but their
result is more effective in comparison to The Besnard Lakes. Implodes are a
relatively young band, based out of Chicago, and are signed to hometown
favorite Kranky Records.
Recurring Dream is
structured in a way that kind of draws your attention to just about every other
song. It opens with a two-minute intro track of low drones and ominous sounds,
before heading into the pretty straightforward “Scattered in the Wind.” Both that song, as well as “Necronomics,”
gives you a pretty clear understanding of the band’s sound—low, echoing vocals,
fuzzed out guitar solos, delay and reverb heavy rhythm guitar, and cavernous
drums. Their aesthetic could be compared to that of early A Place to Bury
Strangers, although Implodes are fare more listenable, and not nearly as
threatening or abrasive. It turns out, also, that six out of the eleven tracks
on the record are actually, like, “legit” songs. The structuring with
instrumentals as every other track is completely intentional, and creates some
breathing room between each song.
After listening to the record a few times, I started to
wonder if the interludes were present to distract slightly from how similar the
songs all start to sound. That is a bit of a downside to Recurring Dream. The band certainly has a sound, and they really
get as much mileage out of it as they can. The guitar soloing begins to sound
the same after a few songs, as does the overall mood and feeling set by the
band.
In comparison to their debut from two years ago, Implodes
have dialed back a bit of the gloom and doom, and honed some of sheer noise
into a manageable element to their sound, rather than just—here’s a bunch of
noise with some unintelligible vocals over the top of it.
I found that Recurring
Dream didn’t demand my attention, but it also wasn’t the kind of album I
wanted to ignore. Maybe I was looking for more from it than it is able to give.
It’s not bad by any means, but it also isn’t, like, a revelation in music. It
simply exists. And if you are a fan of contemporary bands that continue on with
the shoegazing sound, it’s possibly worth your time.
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