Lake Eerie Music

The pull of the north, beyond the great black mass of mountains, brooding and strong, leads me to a hearth, a home, in a cold, smoky railroad town, with a light, a warm square of light, among the pine and purple silhouette of peaks, lonely and proud. The smell of onions and garlic sweating and browning in a cast iron pan on a wood stove, fogging the window, blurring the square of light, fills the black alpine sky, mixing with spruce, fallen leaves, and smoldering embers from the neighbour's chimney across the valley. There is a man, smoking a cigarette, old and weathered, with a creased baseball cap, filled with stories of hardship and lost love, his eyes like the ice dangling from the eaves of his humble home. He sees no warmth in the square of light, as he clenches his tired hands around a losing lottery stub. He puts out his smoke and goes inside with a heavy sigh.

design by Ronit Novak and Tony Dekker

Long afternoon shadows and smoky tungsten twilight as the lonely banjo echoes through the prairies. Cavernous and rural, Great Lake Swimmers' wonderfully understated self-titled debut vintage folk album was recorded in an abandoned grain silo, somewhere in Canada. Images of the desolate great lakes appear as Tony Dekker's icy cold voice sails somwhere above the clouds, evoking Neil Young, Red House Painters, Nick Drake and Wil Oldham. Their sophomore release, Bodies and Minds was recorded in a lakeside church in rural southern Ontario, continuing the tradition of haunting acoustics and bittersweet melodies.

"The band's tempos now surpass dirge-speed and their ever-reverberant arrangements have grown to include drums, banjo, pedal steel, Wurlitzer and, on one song, a choir. However, Tony Dekker's reliable, vaguely liturgical tenor still dominates the vast, barren landscapes of their sound, a fine, if sometimes frosty setting for his intimations about mundane tragedies and transcendental yearnings." (Lorraine Carpenter, Montreal Mirror, 17 March 2005)

Drag yourself through the drab Vancouver fog and discover the expansive baroque pop of this Toronto quintet, Sunday Novemeber 20th at the Lamplighter. With Jonathan Inc.

Poster by Sealed With a Kiss
Photo by me