The Besnard Lakes

In the mid-2000s the Montreal collective the Besnard Lakes surfaced with an assured first statement that fused expansive space rock atmospheres, psychedelic pop melodies, and polished sonic detail. Their characteristically ambitious and often enigmatic approach earned them notice for lengthy, densely layered tracks as well as unusually extended album titles. Fronted by the husband-and-wife team of Jace Lasek and Olga Goreas, the group collected Polaris Prize nominations for the 2007 release The Besnard Lakes Are the Dark Horse and its 2010 successor The Besnard Lakes Are the Roaring Night. Subsequent projects found them scoring films while sustaining an inventive and demanding sequence of recordings that continued into the following decade with the expansive double album The Besnard Lakes Are the Last of the Great Thunderstorm Warnings issued in 2021.

Lasek, who sings and plays guitar, and Goreas, who sings and plays bass, launched the Besnard Lakes in 2001 while Lasek maintained his primary role as a busy producer at Breakglass Studios, the Montreal facility he and Goreas own. Among the Canadian indie acts whose records Lasek has produced and engineered are Wolf Parade, the Dears, and Stars. Although the band began as a full-time concern, the remaining original members departed before the debut album could be made. Lasek and Goreas nonetheless completed nearly all of the self-released 2003 album Besnard Lakes, Vol.1 during available studio hours. Positive reviews soon prompted the formation of a touring lineup that included guitarists Steve Raegele and Jeremiah Bullied together with drummer Kevin Laing. During work on the second album Bullied was succeeded by Richard White, while keyboardist and arranger Nicole Lizée joined the group. After signing with the respected dream pop label Jagjaguwar, the band issued The Besnard Lakes Are the Dark Horse in February 2007 and followed it with The Besnard Lakes Are the Roaring Night in March 2010. In 2011 they undertook two soundtrack commissions—one for Mark Ruffalo’s Sympathy for Delicious and another for the multimedia documentary Welcome to Pine Point—while also beginning sessions that would lead to 2013’s Until in Excess, Imperceptible UFO, longlisted that year for the Polaris Music Prize.

White withdrew from touring in 2014 yet continued contributing to studio recordings. Guitarist Robbie MacArthur was added to the live configuration, and Sheenah Ko permanently assumed the keyboard chair vacated by Lizée. The fifth studio album, A Coliseum Complex Museum, appeared in early 2016; an EP titled The Besnard Lakes Are the Divine Wind followed in early 2017. After the death of Lasek’s father prompted a short hiatus, the experience also shaped the themes of the sprawling double album The Besnard Lakes Are the Last of the Great Thunderstorm Warnings. Released in January 2021 on Full Time Hobby, the set became the band’s first full-length for that label. Additional material from the same sessions, later reworked, yielded the companion EP The Besnard Lakes Are the Prayers for the Death of Fame, issued in 2022.