So far this year The Besnard Lakes have blown away audiences at SXSW, appeared as the musical guest on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon and returned from a successful tour of Europe.
Not bad for a band that, as co-singer and songwriter Jace Lasek puts it, “doesn’t make music that’s very hip.”
“A lot of our fans seem to be of an older nature,” Lasek explains with a chuckle. “Our influences are coming from ’60s pop, ’70s guitar rock and ’90s shoegaze. People who are fans of those genres of music tend to be a bit older. And it’s funny, because younger kids who like what we’re doing think we are new.”
The Montreal group’s third and latest release, The Besnard Lakes Are the Roaring Night, is a sweeping psychedelic rock record, dripping in shoegaze-style feedback and meandering melodies — As demonstrated on the album’s first single, Albatross, a sprawling sonic tapestry accented by the band’s dreamy vocal harmonies and singer Olga Goreas’ sweet, fragile vocal delivery.
“So far the reaction has been really, really good,” says Lasek. “We’ve been quite shocked about how excitedly people have been writing and talking about it.”
The album was recorded at Lasek and Goreas’ Breakglass Studio using a vintage 1968 mixing console, which was used in the recording of Led Zeppelin’s classic 1975 record, Physical Graffiti. Lasek says the older board was perfect for the sound he hoped to create.
“Sometimes when I’m in the studio, I record haphazardly because I just want to get to the end of the song to hear what it sounds like,” he explains. “I don’t focus on getting the perfect drum sound or anything or I could be making an album forever. I like that on older albums you hear the flaws. There’s an organic, unconscious feeling you get from them.”
To get an organic yet melodic sounding rock record, Lasek looked to late Beach Boys’ drummer Dennis Wilson’s solo album Pacific Ocean Blue for inspiration.
“It’s got The Beach Boys harmonies, but it’s definitely a ’70s rock album,” he says.
Psychedelic and prog rock wasn’t always Lasek’s cup of tea. Originally from Regina, he played in punk bands and hung out with metalheads and goths. “It’s a pretty small city,” says Lasek. “All the outcasts would hang out, have a good time and trade music. I started listening to a lot of music when I was young. Then a really good friend in high school introduced me to Yes. Suddenly I got really into prog rock and said, ‘Screw three-chord punk, I’m prog rock dude now.’ ” Besnard Lakes play Broken City on Sunday.
