« Nada Surf | Main | The Ex-Boyfriends »
Great Lake Swimmers
An abandoned silo in lovely rural Ontario, a lonely voice in the wilderness, a serene acoustic guitar: these things and more are the tools of Great Lake Swimmers' Tony Dekker. The delicate, understated music of Great Lake Swimmers evokes slowly flickering motion pictures and your grandmother's old-fashioned lace. Quietly beautiful, the tiny, hushed folk masterpieces of Great Lake Swimmers have slowly been winning over converts with lush instrumentation and graceful country-pop majesty. Ande although the band is Canadian in heritage, they could very well be mistaken for successors to Gram Parsons, Red House Painters, or Neil Young with their special brand of restrained, reverb-heavy Americana that sticks in your head, and makes impressions on your heart.
Great Lake Swimmers are at their best when evocative of hidden landscapes and vast empty skies, as in the sparse "Moving Pictures, Silent Films." The echo-filled songs cover the familiar territory of nostalgia, romance, and spirituality. The waltz-time of the stately "I Could Be Nothing" fits in perfectly with these paens to lost loves, as does the bittersweet choir of "Falling Into the Sky," while the gradually building tension of "Bodies and Minds" results in a beguiling jigsaw puzzle of melodies and harmonies.
At once both haunting and soothing, it's an intimate folk sound that compares most closely to Iron and Wine, but with a more lively spirit and a soul of steel. While Sam Beam often sounds like he's given up, Tony Dekker is still pondering the moment. Dekker's voice is sweet, creamy, and fills the room, expansive and embracing. His does not float above the songs, but rather, acts as an anchor for the gently strummed guitar, singing lap steel, barely visible banjo, and sound of crickets; it's music meant to be enjoyed in quiet meditation on a still summer night, rocking on a swing under an antique porch light.
Great Lake Swimmers - Moving Pictures, Silent Films
Great Lake Swimmers - I Will Never See The Sun
Great Lake Swimmers - Bodies and Minds
Great Lake Swimmers - Falling Into the Sky
Great Lake Swimmers - I Could Be Nothing
Great Lake Swimmers' official web site. Buy Bodies and Minds from Amazon or iTunes Music Store.
Shadows tags:greatlakeswimmers.
Posted by Queen of the Front Row at 02.23.06 at 1:01 AM
Comments
Comments are now closed for this entry.
