The Besnard Lakes Are the Last of the Great Thunderstorm Warnings. The weight of such a title might crush a lesser band, but the Montreal space rock veterans have a history of similarly proclamatory banners and once again rise to meet a challenge of their own making. Released five years after 2016's more compact
A Coliseum Complex Museum,
Thunderstorm Warnings is
the Besnards' first outing since leaving their longtime label, Jagjaguwar, and while they've never been known to suffer from the constraints of commercial aspiration, there is a certain note of freedom in these nine sprawling gems. Their dalliance with shorter track lengths now behind them, the band stretch languorously into the void with the combined sense of grandeur and exploration that has been a hallmark since their early days. The unique thing about
the Besnard Lakes that sets them apart from the druggier space rockers and scuzzier psych groups is the way they always seem to fold elegant pop movements into their music, keeping even the longest tracks consistently interesting. The wonderful "Our Heads, Our Hearts on Fire Again" is a perfect example of this. The dueling vocals of core husband-and-wife duo
Jace Lasek and
Olga Goreas add a cinematic sweep as they trade between the song's dreamy synth segments, lush power harmonies, and pounding rhythmic swells in a way that resembles a shoegaze
Brian Wilson conducting
the Polyphonic Spree. The lovely "Feuds with Guns" is another bit of dramatic space pop that plays like a frosty winter sunset with a wonky synth refrain and a soaring falsetto vocal from
Lasek. Even the title track, with its daunting 17-minute run time, is a heady exultation of orchestral rock sweetness that gets most of its business done after six minutes, leaving the listener so blissed-out, they're likely to just tingle quietly through the remaining 11 minutes of droning chords. Written and recorded in the wake of
Lasek's father's death, the overall tone is more life-affirming than mourning. It would be disingenuous to say
the Besnards had been on a downswing prior to this, but in wrestling with mortality they tap into a well of vital energy that makes the group appear revitalized and full of vigor. ~ Timothy Monger