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How often has it been noted that a band were just in the wrong place at the wrong time? Just as Canada has found itself in a position of coolness never seen before, it’s just Great Lake Swimmers’ luck to be from Toronto when everyone is flocking to Montreal to find the next in line to break through in the wake of The Dears and The Arcade Fire. No-one’s really champing at the bit to uncover the successors to Broken Social Scene or Royal City now, are they?
Not that Great Lake Swimmers appear particularly concerned with city life anyway. Their first album was recorded in an abandoned grain silo and this, their sophomore effort, found its home in a rural lakeside church. Accordingly, there’s a gentle rustic Americana feel, not to mention some rather off-putting ambient noise beneath several tracks, as Tony Dekker and cohorts tiptoe along the line between Will Oldham-inspired beauty and James Yorkston-insipid balladry.
That line proves much finer than you might think. For its opening half ’Bodies and Minds’ manages to have a slightly soporific effect on both its title's subjects. The songs are sweet enough on their own but collectively they begin to blend into one another rather quickly. When It Flows sums this up best by being the only track in recorded history to feature both a lap steel and strings and yet fail to make this reviewer curl up in the foetal position gurgling with joy.
Suddenly though, the somnolent atmosphere lifts with the arrival of Falling Into The Sky. Sure, the banjo is almost funereal in pace but it’s the presence of the London Ontario Community Singers that lifts the whole thing to another level. “Fur and feathers and leather and scales, they’ll tear you apart if they get the chance” they chorus merrily, as the whole in-awe-of-the animals spirit of The Handsome Family at their finest imbues the song with warmth and wonder.
The good will that it evokes carries the album through to the close. Imaginary Bars is what Tom Petty would sound like if he was thirty years younger and was raised on a diet of Lambchop, whilst Long Into The Evening is minimal but magical, with Dekker’s vocal finding only scratches of guitar and an echo of percussion for company. If only they’d pulled off these tricks a little sooner, I might have believed they were from Montreal after all.
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