The Besnard Lakes – “Raindrops”
Over the course of five albums, the spaced-out Canadian psych-indie band Besnard Lakes have created a whole world unto themselves. It looks like we’ll be going back there soon: The band have announced a new album called The Besnard Lakes Are The Last Of The Great Thunderstorm Warnings, and it’ll be out in January. It’s the followup to 2016’s A Coliseum Complex Museum, making it the longest stretch between albums in their career thus far. Part of that, apparently, is that they almost didn’t make it to this new one.
After A Coliseum Complex Museum, the Besnards split with their old label. (The Last Of The Great Thunderstorm Warnings marks their first release for Fat Cat in the US.) For a while, they questioned continuing on as a band. At the same time, death marked their lives — particularly frontman Jace Lasek, who lost his father last year. As a result, The Last Of The Great Thunderstorm Warnings is billed as a 72-minute double album split into four sides meant to travel through the surreal slippage between life and death: “Near Death,” “Death,” “After Death,” and finally “Life.”
Along with the announcement, the band has shared a new song called “Raindrops.” “This song and video details a psychedelic flight through the mind while deep in an altered state,” the band said in a statement. “The song lyrically references the death of Mark Hollis from Talk Talk (“Garden Of Eden spirited”) and also describes the idea of evolution determining the story of the Garden Of Eden.” As the revival of the Besnard Lakes Are… naming convention might suggest, “Raindrops” is right in that dreamy, hazy sweet spot this band has, and it would sit well alongside material from the Dark Horse and Roaring Night albums. Check it out below.
TRACKLIST:
01 “Blackstrap”
02 “Raindrops”
03 “Christmas Can Wait”
04 “Our Heads, Our Hearts On Fire Again”
05 “Feuds With Guns”
06 “The Dark Side Of Paradise”
07 “New Revolution”
08 “The Father Of Time Wakes Up”
09 “The Last Of The Great Thunderstorm Warnings”
The Besnard Lakes Are The Last Of The Great Thunderstorm Warnings is out 1/29 on Fat Cat in the US and via Flemish Eye in Canada.
