The Besnard Lakes
I first saw Sennen a decade or so ago, supporting the much-missed Delgados (or was it Mogwai?) at the Waterfront. From the Collected Recordings demos to new LP First Light, they have delighted me with their take on nu-gaze shoegaze, all gentle vocal harmonies, quiet-loud-quiet-LOUDER dynamics and squalling guitars.
Tonight was not a classic Sennen show. I missed the first couple of songs – NAC, I love you but when the first band is on at 8 can please you advertise an earlier time for doors opening? – but a couple of my fellow Outliners described them as being a “bit wet”. From what I did hear, the sound was a bit hit-or-miss and those vocal harmonies weren’t be as prominent as previous gigs. That said, even a slightly below par Sennen make a delicious racket. Please don't leave it four years until your next Norwich show, gents.
I knew next to nothing about The Besnard Lakes before tonight. Yeah, I knew of them and had heard a song or two on compilations but they’d really not registered on my radar. I was really here for Sennen. Well, I’ll definitely be investigating Besnard Lakes further after this show.
Theirs is a sound that mixes seemingly disparate – even mutually exclusive – elements into a glorious whole. The delicious female/male vocal harmonies recall the Fleetwood Mac of Rumours, Pet Sounds-era Beach Boys or Crosby Stills Nash & Young. The guitars cut and duel and squall like My Bloody Valentine jamming with Grateful Dead and Crazy Horse. The rhythm section drives things to the motorik, kosmische beat of Neu! or Can whilst the keys veer from Fleetwood Mac-style AOR to Hawkwind spacerock to the fuzz and static of Broadcast and back again.
With one of the best light shows I have seen at NAC, this is essentially a journey into a psychedelic, spacey prog that brings all that is so exciting and vital about that genre but without the flab, excess and sheer ludicrousness that made so much prog reviled and open to ridicule. Of their contemporaries, there are similarities to Black Mountain, Rose Windows and The Horrors but The Besnard Lakes take things into another dimension. Simply superb.
