The Besnard Lakes' "Last Of The Great Thunderstorm Warnings" is as Majestic as Its Title

Montreal post-rockers The Besnard Lakes used their five-year break to craft their grandest statement to date, a 71-minute hurricane of an album that justifies its length.

The Besnard Lakes have inhabited the blurry border between shoegaze and psych-rock since they formed in 2003. Their guitars roar like a volcano while their vocals, delivered by husband and wife duo Jace Lasek and Olga Goreas, glisten with harmonies straight out of chamber pop.

Since 2010, there's been an intriguing cohesiveness to the Lakes' releases. Every album cover from The Besnard Lakes Are The Roaring Night on is a dreamlike landscape with a surreal color scheme and an intimidating lack of text. This type of forethought is exactly what separates The Besnard Lakes from their shoegaze contemporaries. Their albums aren't just fun guitar noises to wash your ears with, but pieces of what feels like some large unified story. Each album adds a new setting to the Besnard universe.

The setting for ...The Last Of The Great Thunderstorm Warnings could be described as a blend of the inside of Jupiter, a mountain range at the crack of dawn, and naturally, miles and miles of thunderstorms. If you like awe-inspiring sights, you'll find plenty to like about ...The Last Of The Great Thunderstorm Warnings.

Eighteen years into their career, The Besnard Lakes are approaching sound the way an architect approaches the construction of a palace. Instruments sparkle with echo that sounds like it's bouncing across mountains. The trebly keyboard drones feel like sun rays and the guitars feel like black clouds that roll past your legs. The Lakes' days of fuzz are gone, making way for a sound that's much more open and organic.

A 71-minute work is bound to fall apart without care put into its tension and release. Luckily, The Besnard Lakes' sense of song structure has remained sharp. A good example comes when "Christmas Can Wait" ominously builds tension for eight minutes before the following track. "Our Heads, Our Hearts on Fire Again." delivers the album's most satisfying explosion one minute in.

Strong pacing carries over into the more instantaneous tracks. “Feuds With Guns” is one such track, which I dare say reminds me of Washed Out with its blissed-out wall of strings and synths atop a relaxed groove. "New Revolution" strikes a similar infectiousness but with a grimy, stomping drum machine loop. These tracks are less patience-testing because they are woven into the album nicely. Certain string parts on “Feuds With Guns” can get perkier than the album demands, but otherwise these songs carry the album’s sunny and mysterious atmosphere with them.

It's exciting seeing the Besnard Lakes refuse to stagnate. Not only does ...The Last Of The Great Thunderstorm Warnings expand the group's sonic palette, but it brings the band's message to a larger scope. The more grandiose, less fuzz-drenched side of shoegaze can often devolve into bland ambient or orchestral rock, but the Besnard Lakes deliver this style of music with a high level of taste and impact. In the turbulent early days of 2021, what plenty of us need is an album loud and colossal enough to make you feel on top of the world, and Lasek and Goreas have shown that they're more than welcome to fill that need.