Besnard Lakes Roar At Their Album Release Show In Montreal

Warning to anyone considering catching Montreal's Besnard Lakes in a live setting: you better like guitar solos and you better like smoke even more.

Both were in abundance last Friday (March 12) at Jean Talon concert venue Il Motore, the scene of most of the city's recent indie rock extravaganzas. Like the hollowed-out former commercial space that now passes for Montreal's most popular venue, what The Besnard Lakes look like and what they sound like (and the neighbourhood they're located in, to overuse the comparison) are in seemingly different realms altogether.

The husband and wife duo of Jace Lasek and Olga Goreas, flanked by the group's unheralded guitarist Richard White and drummer Kevin Laing, make some of the most epic, psychedelic, atmospheric and monolithic rock music today. Every track is a multi-suited space jammer with reverbed falsetto, movements of sheer dreamy, slow-paced rock 'n' roll beauty and possesses such a far-reaching scope most bands would only choose to approach this kind of music nowadays in a tongue-in-cheek manner.

It's really sincere rock, but it's also studio rock, with an imposing veneer (created with the mixing console used by Led Zeppelin for Physical Graffiti) of fuzz that requires multiple listens to truly digest.

That's not to say The Besnard Lakes can't be an amazing live act when they answer the call. After all, this was the CD launch show for their third release, the ostentatious sounding The Besnard Lakes Are The Roaring Night. If that title doesn't matter of factly define their big, tropospheric sound, I don't know what does, but it may also be a slight jab at their own sincerity because the quartet are far more warm on stage than a series of showgazing progressive rock ditties might suggest.

First, I'm not sure if it's meant as a joke or perhaps playing to stereotype, but Lasek seemingly has a go-to black shirt with floral patterns he wears to every show without fail.

Motown-meets-Creedence opening act Sunday Sinners (and their emphatic gum-chewing frontwoman Jenna Roker) may have looked like art school students, but Lasek and Goreas were dead ringers for their professors — the cool ones who also have a band on the side.

The Besnard Lakes look like seeing your teacher play with his surf rock group on weekends, and always look like they're really enjoying themselves. They're almost swaggerless and even nerdish until their songs uniformly hit their massive apexes. Then, for that fleeting moment they seem like the saviours of rock.

Live, "And You Lied To Me" from The Besnard Lakes Are The Dark Horse is the obvious show closer, simply due to its amazing conclusion (which even got Lasek and Goreas playing within inches of each other), but long before that it became apparent White is not only the band's most important player, but these mythical moments of out-of-body rockage basically hinge on his lead soloing.

From show opener "Like The Ocean, Like The Innocent" parts one and two to the three-song encore that came on long after the last blue line metro had left nearby De Castelnau station, this was a guitar show through and through, with the smoke machines commencing at precisely the right times during "Devastation" and new single "Albatross."

Lasek and White even included the occasional 12-string guitar cameo, adding some meat to "Like The Ocean," which already sounded like Todd Rundgren's "International Feel" at intergalactic levels. Other attempts to bring the studio and the famed mixing console to Il Motore included a laptop used by Lasek seemingly for vocal effects.

The Besnard Lakes played in Toronto the night before, and although in reading their CMW review, I couldn't get a hint as to why that show may have been less welcoming, Goreas kept mentioning how good it was to be back in Montreal. Even Lacek (while sipping on a vodka, in response to the CMW reviewer) seemed more at ease. Either way, the band were loose and it made for a roar deep into the night.