The Besnard Lakes experiment on long awaited 6th studio album
Review by Austin Sher
Back with their first album release since 2016, The Besnard Lakes have finally released their long awaited LP, The Besnard Lakes Are The Last Of The Great Thunderstorm Warnings. We’re loving it! Read along with us for our full thoughts on the album.
Following up 2016’s A Coliseum Complex Museum, The Besnard Lakes are back in true form, potentially even their best yet. The Besnard Lakes Are The Last Of The Great Thunderstorm Warnings is quite the lengthy title, but don’t let it deter you in the slightest from giving a full and complete listen. This Montreal-based psychedelic rock band are doing big things, so let us break it down for you.
Coming in at a total of an hour and 11 minutes, spanning 9 wonderfully produced tracks, there’s truly something for everyone on this record. Whether you’re more into the feeling of slow jams or long drawn out tracks that you really make you sit back and think, your scratch will be itched. Having been quite familiar with the the band’s discography, this is absolutely the direction we’d hope they’d go in. All of the classic Besnard Lakes tones are present, but like any band, they’ve taken the liberties to expand exactly what they’ve been working so hard to achieve.
Now while it might be difficult to sit here and tell you which was our favorite song, we will give you the rundown of those that jumped out at us based off first listen. To begin, the album opener “Blackstrap”, “The Dark Side of Paradise”, “New Revolution”, and the near 18 minute thriller of a closer, “The Last of the Great Thunderstorm Warnings”. Now that’s not to say any of the others fell flat, because they did not, but like any listen there’s always those songs that make you perk up a bit and really pay closer to attention.
Considering the band took such liberties to not put time constraints on themselves, all ideas started on the record were fully fleshed out. To put it easily, it was no holds barred from start to finish. Listening through multiple times at this point though, we sort of hope that other bands will take notice and not confine themselves to 3-4 minute songs in order to appeal to the masses. To be honest, this isn’t an album that is going to do that. In actuality, we do feel that it’s for a specific type of music listener; someone with patience and who’s willing to open their mind a bit.
We really don’t want to give too much away, because we’d obviously prefer you listen for yourselves, but we without a doubt are recommending and suggesting you take the time to sit closely with this one. It requires multiple close listens to fully digest what’s going on. If this happens to be your first foray into the music of The Besnard Lakes, well this certainly wouldn’t be a bad place to start either considering we think it’s one of their best works yet, by far.
At this point though, we’d like for you to become your own judge and let us know what you think. We can only assume the band would like the feedback as well seeing as though they most likely put the last 5 years into creating such beauty. So with that, we’ll leave you to it. Listen, enjoy, and follow along with whatever else they plan to release in the coming years.
Listen to The Besnard Lakes Are The Last Of The Great Thunderstorm Warnings
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