Categories : Music Reviews, Rock + Pop.
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Rating: 3.5 / 5 Reviewer: Garth Paulson |
When The Besnard Lakes broke through into mild indie recognition in 2008 they summed their slow, modest success up quite succinctly by calling the album that got them a glimpse Are the Dark Horse. Comprised of Montreal vets and boasting a sound at once anthemic, droning, beefy and smoldering the band was always going to be a tough sell, but the otherworldly vocals of husband and wife duo Jace Lasek and Olga Goreas, the band’s stoner comfort to spread out and their ability to take huge rock turns won enough over to turn the Besnard Lakes into The Roaring Night. While also an apt description of the band, albeit for different reasons, betting on the night—as sure an eventuality as the day—just isn’t the same as putting money on the dark horse.
That’s not to say that Roaring Night is a failure by any stretch of the imagination. The band is still masterful at the slow build and the big payoff. They can make you care about a seven minute, mid-tempo dirge jam like no other. Lasek’s piercing falsetto still bewitches and sends chills down your spine. There are still threatening black clouds just hanging there, seemingly for too long, before erupting into a brief, glorious, terrifying downpour. It’s not them; it’s us. We know what’s coming now and Roaring Night sticks within the Besnard Lakes’s wheelhouse too squarely to really excite.
Built around the dual two part suites ‘Like the Ocean, Like the Innocent’ and ‘Land of Living Skies,’ the album is more homogenous than its predecessor, electing to spend most of its time in the Besnard sweet spot between their more eerie, flickering moments and their bursts of pure riffage. At times the play this perfectly, such as on ‘Like the Ocean, Like the Innocent Pt. 2: The Innocent’ and ‘And this is What we Call Progress,’ both of which crest gently as they slowly unfold, numbing, absorbing and ultimately claiming listeners. Unfortunately, this same slow-moving ease that calms in areas can plod when applied to a whole album and Roaring Night does lose attention easily, dipping into a thick morass that it struggles to reemerge from.
Even at their most lulling the Besnard Lakes are still worth a listen and their turn as The Roaring Night isn’t so much a disappointment as it an unavoidable acclimatization. As The Dark Horse they took us by surprise—as dark horses are wont to do—but now it’s just not quite as exciting to watch the same horse just miss placing, elegant and impressive as they may be on the track.
