While one can’t deny that there’s a wondrous spectacle about foot-on-the-monitor, balls-out, amps-turned-to-11 rock, it’s occasionally uplifting to hear music which comes from the other end of the spectrum. It’s probably, hand on heart, the more difficult skill; soft, gentle music lilting out, their fragility at once their biggest strength and most obvious weakness. You are, without the banks of effects pedals and the 34 piece drum kit, exposed. You get by on the quality of the songs.
Toronto’s Great Lake Swimmers are fine exponents of the art. Their soft, folksy take on Americana – we’ll use the term to represent the whole American Continent here, pedants – recalls the elegiac grace of Iron & Wine, and the soft homespun joy of Fleet Foxes best work. There is very little between band and audience; indeed, the stage is only about two feet raised.
Their line-up is a rickety mix of short, stacatto drums, gorgeous boy/girl vocals and every instrument seeming an organic, integral part of the set. There’s nothing showy about them. The songs are played, and played well, but left to stand or fall on their own. There is no gimmickry here. The songs will either fly or they won’t.
What great news, then, that they mostly do. There is no doubt the material from new album ‘Lost Channels’ is more expansive than previous work, such as ‘Ongiara’. Single ‘Pulling on a Line’ could be their ‘White Winter Hymnal’ if any radio producer is brave enough to play it. Lovelorn vocals, a naggingly insistent tune and a great story, it really could sit comfortably with any plaid shirted hippy hero’s best work. ‘She Comes to Me in Dreams’ is about as rip-roaring as they get, and it’s simply wonderful. ‘Still’ makes the assembled throng (this venue is tiny, but packed) sway in the manner of drunks. It’s the music which is having that effect though.
They end, alomst inevitably, with a Neil Young cover. Well, they would. But there is so much more to this band than being simple copyists. GLS are not a band you’d put on at the height of a party, but they’d be perfect for that 6am moment when you are nursing a beer and surveying the wreckage. A fine show.
Filed under: gigs Tagged: | americana, Gigs in Glasgow, Glasgow, great lake swimmers, iron and wine, lost channels, ongiara, rock, twisted wheel
T`was a good show indeed ; I felt it was almost a mistake to finish with a neil young cover though – and lord knows I love Mr Bernard Shakey – as it slightly took away from their own work . Still , good music ,avoidance of any bad pints and a run home ; who could wish for anything more ?
That said , I hate to be “shushed” during support acts.
they need to pay those dues ( man ).
Exactly. If you are so quiet the crowd can’t order a beer, you are too quiet!