The Besnard Lakes

The music at this Friday the 13th show was first-rate and I enjoyed all three bands a lot. Sound was good, loud, but not too much. Vocals could have been mixed better. However, I do have some comments and complaints about the venue. The Bowery Ballroom web site said that doors would open at 7:00 and the show would start at 8:00. Now I've been going to concerts for years and I know that shows don't usually begin on time. However, for a 3-band gig I thought this might be close to accurate, and since I had bought my ticket over the web and had instructed it be held in will-call, I arrived on time. As it turned out, doors didn't open until after 8:00 and the first band didn't begin until after 9:00. This is unfair to your customers, a disrespect of their personal time. Next, there was no sense of curation, no sense that the Bowery Ballroom bookers had intentionally assembled this bill and chosen these performers for some coherent reason. For instance, all three groups are from Canada, which has a very active indie music scene. I doubt most other attendees knew this beforehand, and given the difficulty of hearing the band's brief self-descriptions, few listeners may have left knowing this at the end of the evening. Would it kill you to have an announcer say at the beginning of a show something like, "The Bowery Ballroom is proud to present three of the most exciting acts from Montreal, Halifax, etc.. . . ." Let people know why the establishment has chosen to put on this program, instead of another. It's called curation.

Never heard of them until they opened for Band of Horses along with Jenny & Johnny in October 2010. Everyone talked about that duo prior to the show but it was The Besnard Lakes that simply stunned me. Their atmospheric melodies seemed as ethereal as Jace Lasek's voice. His falsetto melds wonderfully with Olga Goreas, his wife, while the band filled more than the Fillmore seemed to handle. I immediately found The Dark Horse when I got back to my PC and have been addicted to it ever since. My only question is why the local Canadian radio stations (93.9 & 88.7) insist on polluting the border airwaves with Nickelback when quality Canadian music is found wandering the tundra with this ascribed shoe-gazer band.

These guys did it all, they rocked, they stayed cool, they were hip, they goofed, they were love and peace. They were bad ass. No hollowness, these guys have worked well in making a show throughly enjoyable. They are thinking about your experience as a listener. Their songs played into each other making the show a journey. A tour de force. Overall there seemed to be a message.

The besnard lakes, & stardeath and the white dwarfs, put on an outrageously awesome show! I was surprised however at how few people showed up to this event. they really rocked it, its too bad so many kids had to miss out on this epic concert. the light show was killer as well.