GREAT LAKE SWIMMERS – LOST CHANNELS

You’d be forgiven for thinking  this album’s opening strains belong to The Smiths – Palmistry chimes its way in with lilting Rickenbackers and bittersweet chord rounds, harking back instantly to something of a bygone era, a unique kind of melancholy and timelessness inhabited by the Church or Cowboy Junkies. Great Lake Swimmers is the pet project of Tony Dekker, whose ever-changing group of alternative folk rock cronies keep the Great Lake sound churning and twisting like weather. This is their fourth record, and arguably the most intimate. The breathlessly pretty Concrete Heart is a true meditation of loneliness, and New Light explores a darkness in folk harmonising not touched often since Simon & Garfunkel’s Scarborough Fair.  The rockier and country-tinged moments pepper the album with some tough-love sentiment, and some weird sounds here and there keep a nice edge on this gentle collection of forlorn folk. In an era where broader audiences are learning to appreciate the understated, this project in all its bare-chested honesty and sad, saturated colours will harbour widespread adoration for years.

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