Jace Lasek

Sunlight Seemed So Bright

In the unlikely event that a sweeping political revolution were to erupt on the streets of a Canadian city, the song ‘And This Is What We Call Progress’ by the Besnard Lakes would be an inspired choice to play over the newsreel images. Starting with guitar work that sounds like a warning siren blaring over a dark city, the drums begin to pound and listeners might just be able to visualize insurgents on the march. The scene is set with the opening lyrics: ‘Sunlight seemed so bright / Lonely days, cold nights / No light / Old ghosts in a line / Evil in the mine’.

A sense of foreboding permeates The Besnard Lakes Are The Roaring Night, the third full release from the Montreal-based band. Fronting the group is the husband and wife songwriting team of guitarist Jace Lasek and bassist Olga Goreas. Originally from Saskatchewan, the pair seems intent on gradually building a wider world for their songs, one characterized by continuity in album titles, artwork, and storylines.

This cohesiveness is clear when contemplating the new album next to the second offering from the group, The Besnard Lakes Are The Dark Horse, which surfaced in 2007. In addition to the similarity of the titles, painter Corri-Lynn Tetz produced the distinctive cover art for both album jackets. In the images the dominant theme seems to be the power of fire, for purposes both destructive and cleansing.

In order to get a grasp on storylines, one must go back to Volume 1, the 2003 debut record from the band, specifically the song ‘For Spy Turned Musician’. Beginning there an opaque story begins to unfold documenting the shadowy interplay between two spies, one male and one female. This tale has taken shape only gradually, with snippets of information turning up in lyrics on all three albums.

Before a recent performance at Call the Office in London, Ontario, Jace Lasek took a few moments to discuss the common threads that tie together the three Besnard Lakes albums. “I think it gives the listener something familiar,” he suggests. “If you’re a fan, that thing that’s familiar is something that keeps you coming back to it.”

What makes this familiarity most interesting for the audience is how slowly the ideas and characters involved are coming into focus. Lasek is aware of this, noting that the video for ‘Albatross’, perhaps the most captivating track on the new record, helps to unpack the mystery a little bit. “We keep talking about the idea of making the videos be a lot more literal, and a lot about what is happening lyrically in the songs, so the idea of the concept of these two spies gets visually represented. It really hasn’t been like that before. I like that idea because to me it’s visual when you’re listening to it, but it’s cryptic. The video maybe helps to enlighten a little bit.”



Released in March 2010, The Besnard Lakes Are The Roaring Night recently made the shortlist for the fifth annual Polaris Prize. Comprised of ten tracks sequenced to work well as two sides on vinyl, Lasek affirms that every effort was made to ensure that the album would be listened to as a whole. The first side opens with ‘Like The Ocean, Like The Innocent’, a song divided into two tracks. The second side begins with ‘Land Of Living Skies’, also cut into two. “We did the part one-part two things just to fuck with iTunes a little bit,” Lasek laughs. “We want people to listen to the whole album. If somebody makes the mistake of buying part one of either of those songs, they’re only getting a piece of the song. It’s our little ‘buy the record!’ It’s not a record to be listened to one song here, one song there; we want people to listen to the whole thing, and on vinyl – flip the side, sit down, and get absorbed by it.”

It is easy to get wrapped up in The Roaring Night, and it is easier still to get drawn into the live show. The Besnard Lakes tore through eight numbers at Call the Office. The highlight of their performance was the dynamite package of three songs set in the middle of the show: ‘Chicago Train’, ‘Albatross’, and ‘And This Is What We Call Progress’. At centre stage, Lasek towered over the scene, joined by Goreas to his left, who has possibly the most hypnotic gait of any bassist in the country. Guitarist Richard White and drummer Kevin Laing currently round out the group.

In the following interview, Jace Lasek looks at The Besnard Lakes Are The Roaring Night from several angles. He talks about the album cover artwork, the Polaris Prize, and the relationship between the band and commercial radio. Sitting in on the conversation on the back patio at Call the Office was Kevin Laing, who lived in London briefly and seemed happy to be back in familiar digs. Our discussion ranges back and forth between the serious and the lighthearted. Readers might especially enjoy the passage in which Lasek and Laing ponder the merits of church attendance!

CI: Let me start by asking about the painting on the album cover, which I think is pretty cool …

JL: That was done by a friend of ours, Corri-Lynn Tetz, and she did the last record as well. We give her ideas and show her a bunch of templates. She just goes from there and does her thing. She’s getting really good. When we did the Dark Horse cover, I asked, ‘can we do a horse on fire?’ She was like, ‘oh, I don’t know, doing fire is so hard!’ But now, since she did that one, she says ‘oh yeah, fire, no problem, I can just throw some fire in there. …’



CI: It looks like she’s mastered it here. In the image itself, as I looked at it, we have planes, a hydro tower, and cannons. As a way of judging an album by the cover, what did you think this accomplished as far as introducing the songs?

JL: Well, it’s kind of like a city under siege, right? It appears as if the cannons have produced the destruction, but the cannons are now being buried in the water. It’s almost like the water is trying to protect the city.

CI: I want to ask about the Polaris Prize. The band was nominated a couple of years ago for the Dark Horse album, and now again for this one. Instead of just asking how you feel about the Polaris Prize nomination, I thought I would ask something different. When you look at Neil Young or Joni Mitchell, those sorts of people, and when they were growing up and getting started, there really wasn’t much of a scene in Canada in general to get attached to. They just needed to get out. The Polaris Prize is now five years old, and other things have come along to generate something of a scene across the country. When you were growing up out in Saskatchewan, playing music, were you looking in Canada? Was it in your mind that you wanted to be part of this thing in Canada, or were you looking more south of the border?

JL: I think we were all looking south of the border, yeah …

KL: But there has always been bands in Canada that never got their due as well.

JL: Definitely!

KL: I actually lived in London here, and I used to come to shows at Call the Office. There were bands from south of the border that would be amazing. I would come here with six of my friends to Call the Office in ninety-three, ninety-four, and we’d be watching Trans-Am – you name it – some great bands. There would just be a few of us weirdo-types from the town here, and that would be it! I think it comes down to how Canada cultivates a lot of things, but I think it has certainly got a lot better. People have their ear to the ground, and their ears open a little more.

JL: There was some great stuff in the early days, like King Cobb Steelie, which was from around here. Their stuff was amazing. Primrods from Calgary – I’m a big fan of those guys. …

KL: Weights and Measures I always liked, too. Wooden Stars had their moments.

JL: Yeah, they were great too. It was harder because we didn’t have the Internet when we were growing up. It was a lot harder to figure out who bands were and where they were from. You had to pick up magazines, or listen to Brave New Waves.

CI: Well that’s true, because even just looking at the Polaris Prize website, there is the full list of everyone that’s been nominated along with links to their website and MySpace page. It’s all very consumer-friendly. Now, how do you feel in general about the award? I always find these things kind of curious. If I’m putting your album next to one by Basia Bulat or Jason Collett, and try to compare and determine which one is best, it’s an awkward thing to try to do. What do you make of that? Is it more just for the promotion of it all?

JL: I don’t know. I think it’s cool to have the Polaris Prize here. Every other country has a national prize for musicians. I’m sure when Fucked Up won, or for anybody who wins, twenty grand can go a long way with a band. I think it’s a nice gesture to have that available.

KL: The fact that the powers-that-be are interested, and it’s not all super radio-friendly music – well, some of it is – but I think that can only help cultivate music and the arts in general. It’s a fun party, too!

JL: Yeah, absolutely. That’s the cool thing about the Polaris Prize: it seems just to be geared toward good music. It doesn’t matter if it’s playing on the radio or if nobody has heard it. It’s just based on a really great album that everybody agrees on. I think that makes it important.

CI: As far as radio, there are a couple songs on The Roaring Night that I would say, well, maybe they could fit on radio, but what has your experience been with commercial radio in this country? Is it just a stone wall when you try to put out ambitious work like this, these cinematic songs, or do you find people here and there who are willing to put it on?

JL: It’s harder for us, too, because our songs are really long. Commercial radio is still really geared to the three and a half minute pop song. We’ve been shocked that ‘Albatross’ has been played on the radio a couple of times. I think satellite radio has been really good to us.

KL: And college radio – it’s always sort of pushed into those corners. Mainstream radio is kind of a dead thing anyway. I’ve never really put much thought into it.

JL: Yeah, we don’t really care about getting into commercial radio anyways. If they play it, that’s awesome. We would love to reach a wider audience, but it’s not going to stop us.

CI: For people coming to see the band for the first time, these songs, being quite broad – are you making fairly faithful replicates in the live show, or do you expand them? What are the arrangements like live?

JL: I think the more we play them, the more we expand them. We build them in the studio, and then we rehearse them. Of course, we can’t replicate them exactly, so we adjust them …

KL: What you can play with live is just sonically you can make things more exhilarating and loud. Maybe it can compensate for a few parts that we can’t pull off with just the four of us. But it’s still the songs. The songs are essentially there.

JL: It’s still very powerful and quite potent. Some people even come up to us and say that the live show is even better than the record is. That’s kind of cool. We know we’re doing our job!

CI: Breaking down the album: there are ten songs, with the two parts of ‘Like The Ocean, Like The Innocent’ kicking off the album, and then the two parts of ‘Land of Living Skies’ taking up the sixth and seventh slots. Was it set up as an A side and a B side with vinyl in mind?

JL: Always, yeah. We did the part one-part two things just to fuck with iTunes a little bit. We want people to listen to the whole album. If somebody makes the mistake of buying part one of either of those songs, they’re only getting a piece of the song. It’s our little ‘buy the record!’ It’s not a record to be listened to one song here, one song there; we want people to listen to the whole thing, and on vinyl – flip the side, sit down, and get absorbed by it.

CI: I came across an interview recently with you where you were saying that, even though obviously this album is meant to be listened to as a whole, you were also saying that maybe there are a few things that you could try in order to get music out there more quickly, even if it’s experimenting with singles or digital releases. I did an interview at the end of March with Hawksley Workman. He had two albums come out this year, one in normal format and one just released online through his website. He said that he liked the idea of being able to put music out the day he makes it, so it’s ‘like eating fresh-baked bread’ for the people listening to it. You could imagine even going out that same night and seeing him play it. Anyway, he seemed to like the immediacy of that idea. Could you ever see yourself getting into that?

JL: I love that idea. I think it’s wicked! We’ve actually thought about – we have an online store now – and we’ve been tossing around the idea, because we have a studio and we have the luxury of being able to go in and just put something down really quickly. I like that idea. Again, going back to the old days, you wouldn’t have been able to do that. The Internet gives you access to be able to do those things.

CI: There is a nice video out for ‘Albatross’. I watched it a few times. The director is Kara Blake. I’m always fascinated by the process of putting images to music, especially with a song like that. What were the conversations like with the director? What did you want to accomplish in that video?

JL: She had a concept, and we got involved to sort of make sure that the idea of the spies was there, and the numbers. We’re actually talking now with a friend of Kevin’s, who is going to do a video for us as well. We keep talking about the idea of making the videos be a lot more literal, and a lot about what is happening lyrically in the songs, so the idea of the concept of these two spies gets visually represented. It really hasn’t been like that before. I like that idea because to me it’s visual when you’re listening to it, but it’s cryptic. The video maybe helps to enlighten a little bit.

CI: At this point with album titles like The Besnard Lakes Are The Dark Horse and The Besnard Lakes Are The Roaring Night, the continuity of having the same artist do the cover art on the last two releases, and as you say now about the video, also trying to flesh out some of the scenery to put into people’s minds, is it about building a world for the songs, a whole aesthetic world? Is that where you are trying to get to?

JL: I think it gives the listener something familiar. If you’re a fan, that thing that’s familiar is something that keeps you coming back to it. I was talking about Yes records where it’s always the same artist. You know when you go into the record store that that is a Yes record, and you don’t even have to think about it. You know it’s that. I think fans like the fact that they can recognize it, and they feel a little bit closer to it. With us starting to repeat things, we want to give the fan an opportunity to become comfortable with what they’re listening to and absorbing with us. In a way it’s showing respect to the fan, showing continuity in what they’re listening to when they’re with us.

CI: So Call the Office here in London tonight, and The Mod Club in Toronto recently – now that you’ve gone back and forth across the country quite a lot, have you got a few favourite venues where you really enjoy playing?

KL: Oh sure, I’ve always really liked the Horseshoe. Let’s see, hmmm … well, just in Canada?

JL: Yeah, because shit, there are some really amazing venues in Europe that really do it up nice! They feed you, a full rider. They treat you so well.

KL: Call the Office has a certain nostalgic value for me just because I lived here. I watched a lot of shows here in my formative years, and played here in punk rock bands when I was a kid. This always stands out to me as a fun place to come. I usually run into a few friends.

CI: Did you grow up here, or did you go to school here or something?

KL: No, I’m from Kincardine, Ontario. I lived here when I was twenty-one to twenty-three or something like that, so just a short spell …

CI: Well, I always ask about venues because I travel around Canada quite a bit, and I keep finding these places that I had never known, venues that sort of stand out. I saw Hawksley play in Regina at Darke Hall. That’s a neat, beautiful old space.

JL: Yeah, that’s a beautiful place! We’ve never played there. I went to university in Regina for a brief time, so I knew Darke Hall because that’s where all the recitals were when the music faculty was in that building. That’s a beautiful place, but we’ve never actually played there. We don’t have enough fans to play that place yet!

CI: Just one question on ‘Chicago Train’, and the opening two and a half minutes or so: your voice at that point struck me as almost other-worldly. It reminded me of travelling in Europe and ducking into churches just to see what they looked like, and every once in a while catching mass or something and hearing the soloist in the choir. I thought that part of ‘Chicago Train’ almost had a hymn-like quality. Some musicians that I talk to started out by going to church when they were young, and that was their first exposure to music. Did you have anything like that? Where did that sound come from?

JL: I don’t know – Phil Spector, reverb chambers, the love of old organs and reverb! Yeah, churches were something that I just drove by when I was young. Both my parents were atheists. There was never any churchgoing at all. I used to go with friends from time to time just to see what it was like. It was always such a weird world. Kevin has spent some time in churches …

KL: My parents took us to church probably twice a week for most of my early years.

JL: That’s just so disciplined!

KL: It didn’t help!

CI: Sometimes that discipline forces the opposite outcome – often, actually …

KL: That would be the case for my brother and me!

Date of Interview: 06/19/2010
Location: Call the Office, London, ON
Link: www.thebesnardlakes.com