Like the Staves' album, Great Lake Swimmers' latest release rather underwhelmed me, but here the similarities end with the gig I attended earlier this week. Listed to at home, the opening track of New Wild Everywhere sounds laid back to the point of blandness. Pitchfork said that 'the band strains for exuberance' dismissing their work with a lowly 5.7 rating. Yet the energy was immediately apparent from I Think That You Might Be Wrong which opened the set. The second (title) track had even more impact, and throughout the 90 minutes I was utterly captivated, and could barely keep my feet still.
The evening had opened memorably with the Canadian support act, Dusted, consisting of singer and guitarist Brian Borcherdt and dummer Leon Tahency. He toured for six years with the electronica outfit Holy F*ck, then this year recorded a folk album Total Dust in a converted garage. The soft vocals and incandescent guitar playing suggest introspection, but passion isn't too far below the surface. The effect can be desolate, but always engagingly musical, with a lo-fi, fuzzy aesthetic.
Like Dusted, Great Lake Swimmers are based in Toronto, but they originate from rural Wainfleet west of The Niagra Falls. Their songwriter and lead singer Tony Dekker said of his project:
When I take a step back and think about what I can offer in terms of a unique perspective, it’s that relationship with the natural world. I feel it in my bones.
The sincerity of this connection's demonstrated by their support to the campaign against the Northern Gateway Pipelines in Western Canada, which threatens the priceless Great Bear Rainforest. I recently returned from a trip to northern Manitoba, to the west of Ontario, and I feel that what connects this music to the landscape is the central importance of simple melody. The instrumentation is subtly deployed and largely acoustic: guitar, banjo, double bass, violin, along with drums and electric guitar.
Great Lake Swimmers has been compared to Americana such as Fleet Foxes and Will Oldham. There's no doubt that 1970's country rock is influential here, but it's combined with traditional folk, in which I detected Celtic, and specifically Scottish roots. This may have been due to the virtuoso violin playing of Miranda Mulholland, whose reels had my feet tapping throughout. She also makes an important contribution vocally, her voice intertwining delightfully with Dekker's.
I prefer their 2009 album Lost Channels (which was nominated for the Juno and Polaris prizes) to this year's, and we were treated to my favourite song from it, Palmistry. The highlight of the show though was Still, also from Lost Channels, performed acoustically, unmiked, in the middle of the crowd as a sing-along. This may rate as the most memorable encore I've ever experienced, especially given the tiny venue. In the middle of the set we heard a solo version of Changing Colours from Ongiara, followed by the more recent Changes with the Wind, during which Dekker was gradually joined on stage by his fellow band members. Another highlight was the spirited Ballad of a Fisherman's Wife.
The overall impression was one of unalloyed joy: it was so wonderful to observe Miranda's beaming smile throughout, and it's clear that there's no where in the world these musicians would rather have been than touring, spreading their love of nature through music. After this experience, I can now appreciate New Wild Everywhere more fully, and whilst the production may have smoothed its edges, live they are an utterly absorbing experience. In fact, I was taken back to one of the very first concerts I attended by Iron and Wine, when my eyes were first opened to the joy of live music. I feel a particular affinity to rootsy American, but even objectively this was unmissable.
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