Earlier this year The Besnard Lakes released their fifth full-length, A Coliseum Complex Museum, another brilliantly lovely post-rock exploration of songwriter and frontman Jace Lasek’s much publicized simultaneous loves of The Beach Boys, early Bee Gees, and psychedelic shoegaze (Read more about it here.) At the heart of The Besnard Lakes is Lasek and wife Olga Goreas, who have been kicking out experimental jams since 2003’s Volume 1. However, for their latest release they simplified and stripped down the recording process for the first time in several years (while somehow also allowing themselves to produce some of their prettiest and most ethereal sounds.) The band are currently on tour and will be playing tonight, July 29th, at Boot & Saddle, and Lasek recently took some time to chat and tell me about the recording of their latest album.
“It was great. I own a studio in Montreal. We usually go in empty handed and essentially write in the studio, but this time we had the songs prepared pretty much ahead of time so when we got into the studio we just had to flesh out these somewhat completed songs. We also kept some of the raw demoes without doing too much to them, so there’s a rawness to this album that maybe wasn’t there with some previous releases.”
A Coliseum Complex Museum came out on Jagjaguwar in January, and The Besnard Lakes have already spent much of 2016 on the road, which Lasek tells me is something they will continue to do: “We’ve been doing a lot of touring. We were in Europe for three and a half weeks, which was great, we’ve been playing Canada, and now we’re on the East Coast. We go home to Montreal after this is done for a week and then we have two weeks of festivals in Europe, and then we’ll do some more touring of Canada and then back to the West Coast in the fall.” And when I ask what can be expected of The Besnard Lakes tonight, he simply tells me, “If the place allows fog machines, there will be lazers [laughs (although he’s totally not kidding…)]”
