Album: Great Lake Swimmers / Lost Channels

Artist: Great Lake Swimmers

Title: Lost Channels

The fourth album under the GLS name goes the furthest in the steady progression from bandonym to band, with a fuller, more rocking sound. This doesn't mean that the arrangements overwhelm Tony Dekker's words so much as the fact that this no longer merely feels like the work of a singer/songwriter being fleshed out by the instruments around him. This also helps close the gap between album and performance, one spot where past GLS efforts have always felt a little frustrating. Dekker's voice is still best appreciated in a rewarding acoustic setting, but this is getting closer to the mark.

Meanwhile, we are rewarded here with some more top-shelf songs from one our premiere balladeers. "Still", whose title might call up images of inertness instead pulls from Tony's bag of metaphors to invoke a yearning sense of potentiality. Closer "Unison Falling Into Harmony" is simply one of Dekker's loveliest songs, a river waltz with wind and gravity and the forces behind the aching desire to break through the unknowability and beauty of another.¹

Also noteworthy is "Concrete Heart"² which uses Toronto's brutalist architecture as landmarks of love won and lost:

This is the place where I felt
like the world's tallest self-supporting tower
at least for a little while, anyway

The lyric slides a bit in the second verse, to something that should be deserving of a grant or Cultural Award for a perfect summation of the Torontonian and Canadian mindset:

This is the place where I felt
like the world's tallest self-supporting tower
(or maybe number two)
at least for a little while, anyway

A very lovely album that felt warm and yielding from the outset while still hinting that there remain depths yet to discover — a most welcome and sought-after companion.

Track Picks: 4 - "Concrete Heart", 9 - "Still", 12 - "Unison Falling Into Harmony"

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¹ This song's deployment in public spaces may lead to dangerous outbreaks of hand-holding.

² A song I shall probably always carry an irrationally fond affection for from having been lucky enough to witness its debut.