BESNARD LAKES - The Besnard Lakes Are The Ghost Nation

Four years after the excellent "The Besnard Lakes Are the Last of the Great Thunderstorm Warnings", Canadian married couple Jace Lasek and Olga Goreas have returned with another excellent work, their seventh to be exact.

The album continues their tradition of building immense, dense, layered walls of sound made of guitar feedback and icy synths. However, compared to its predecessor, which had darker atmospheres, here the air feels lighter and, in some respects, more optimistic.

The sound remains focused on a grandiloquent blend of psych-pop, shoegaze and dream-pop, but here it's rendered in a more intimate and melodic key, enough to recall bands like Beach House and, above all, Slowdive, thanks to the ethereal melancholy running through much of the album.

The central theme of "Ghost Nation" is absence, with an attempt to give shape to what is immaterial, be it a memory or a simple idea. The tracks follow one another almost as a single uninterrupted melodic flow, while the lyrics, often abstract and minimal, act more as evocations than narratives, reflecting the dreamlike nature of their music.

In the gorgeous, slow and introspective opener "Calling Ghostly Nations", a not-too-glacial synth drone and a pulsing bass dominate, creating an ethereal veil that slowly thickens, with Lasek and Goreas's whispered vocals making the whole thing particularly moving.

"Chemin De La Baie" gains in dynamism and intensity through a more sustained yet still grandiose groove, with layered guitars creating a dense, melancholic sound.

The album's first single was "In Hollywood", marked by heavily reverberated guitars and a slow, heavy rhythmic pace that give the track an enigmatic, almost funereal tone.

"Pontiac Spirits", meanwhile, reflects on lingering memories and inner conflicts, and is the track that best embodies their more cosmic and ethereal side. It's a piece built on slow harmonic progressions that create a sense of floating, though the finale then explodes into a riot of shoegaze with psychedelic overtones.

The album's closing tracks, "The Clouds Are Casting Shadows From The Sunlight" and "Give Us Our Dominion", focus on the contrast between light and shadow. The first is a dream-pop ballad with a cinematic approach, while the second serves as a genuine orchestral catharsis. The entire instrumentation comes together for a majestic, symphonic crescendo, closing the album with a sense of quiet and solemnity.

Besnard Lakes paint yet another grandiose, deeply immersive soundscape with "The Besnard Lakes Are The Ghost Nation". It's a cohesive, intense work that cements the Canadian duo's status as one of the cornerstones for lovers of epic, dreamlike rock.

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16/11/2025