The Besnard Lakes Announce New Album With First Single and Video Release: Raindrops
Magisterial Montreal psych-rock band The Besnard Lakes are pleased to announce their new album, ‘The Besnard Lakes Are The Last of the Great Thunderstorm Warnings’, set for release on January 29, 2021.
The 72-minute suite marks the first release via their new labels — Flemish Eye in Canada, Fat Cat Records in the US — and today they reveal the LP’s first single, “Raindrops,” by way of a video that was shot by Joseph Yarmus.
For ‘The Last of the Great Thunderstorm Warnings’, The Besnard Lakes dispensed with a timeline and instead took all the time they needed to conceive, compose, record, and mix the album. Some of its songs are old, resurrected from demos cast aside years ago.
Others were literally woodshedded in the cabin behind band members Lasek and Goreas’ Rigaud Ranch – invented and reinvented, relishing this rougher sound. Some of that distortion makes its way into the final mix: an incandescent crackle that had receded from the Besnards’ more recent output.
The Besnard Lakes Are The Last of the Great Thunderstorm Warnings Track List
9. The Last of the Great Thunderstorm Warnings
‘The Besnard Lakes Are The Last of the Great Thunderstorm Warnings’ is a double LP. “Near Death” is the title of the first side. “Death,” “After Death,” and “Life” follows next. It’s a journey into (and back from) the brink: the story of The Besnard Lakes’ own odyssey but also a remembrance of others’, especially the death of Lasek’s father in 2019.
Being on your deathbed is perhaps the most psychedelic trip you can go on: in Lasek’s father’s case, he surfaced from a morphine dream to talk about a ‘window’ on his blanket, with a ‘carpenter inside, making intricate objects.’ That experience pervades the album.
In late 2020, as the world burns, there might be nothing less trendy than an hour-long psych-rock epic by a band of Canadian grandmasters. Then again, there might be nothing we need more.
Watch + share the official “Raindrops” music video.
Pre-order ‘The Besnard Lakes Are The Last of the Great Thunderstorm Warnings’ via Flemish Eye.
