The Besnard Lakes Are the Last of the Great Thunderstorm Warnings＜限定盤/Purple Vinyl＞

The Besnard Lakes Are the Last of the Great Thunderstorm Warnings. The weight of such a title might crush a lesser band, but the Montreal space rock veterans have a history of similarly proclamatory banners and once again rise to meet a challenge of their own making. Released five years after 2016s more compact A Coliseum Complex Museum, Thunderstorm Warnings is the Besnards first outing since leaving their longtime label, Jagjaguwar, and while theyve never been known to suffer from the constraints of commercial aspiration, there is a certain note of freedom in these nine sprawling gems. Their dalliance with shorter track lengths now behind them, the band stretch languorously into the void with the combined sense of grandeur and exploration that has been a hallmark since their early days. The unique thing about the Besnard Lakes that sets them apart from the druggier space rockers and scuzzier psych groups is the way they always seem to fold elegant pop movements into their music, keeping even the longest tracks consistently interesting. The wonderful Our Heads, Our Hearts on Fire Again is a perfect example of this. The dueling vocals of core husband-and-wife duo Jace Lasek and Olga Goreas add a cinematic sweep as they trade between the songs dreamy synth segments, lush power harmonies, and pounding rhythmic swells in a way that resembles a shoegaze Brian Wilson conducting the Polyphonic Spree. The lovely Feuds with Guns is another bit of dramatic space pop that plays like a frosty winter sunset with a wonky synth refrain and a soaring falsetto vocal from Lasek. Even the title track, with its daunting 17-minute run time, is a heady exultation of orchestral rock sweetness that gets most of its business done after six minutes, leaving the listener so blissed-out, theyre likely to just tingle quietly through the remaining 11 minutes of droning chords. Written and recorded in the wake of Laseks fathers death, the overall tone is more life-affirming than mourning. It would be disingenuous to say the Besnards had been on a downswing prior to this, but in wrestling with mortality they tap into a well of vital energy that makes the group appear revitalized and full of vigor. ~ Timothy Monger