The Besnard Lakes build worlds through accumulation. On their seventh album, The Besnard Lakes Are the Ghost Nation, that process feels more deliberate than ever. The Montreal quartet returns to their signature blend of shoegaze grandeur and psych-pop patience, but here the scale feels intimate rather than cosmic. The record explores belonging and community without announcing its themes. Instead, it lets harmony and atmosphere make the case.
The title itself proposes something specific. A ghost nation is not a place you can map. It’s a collective that exists in shared sound, in the space between voices, in the agreement between listeners. That idea runs through the album like a current, shaping how the songs unfold and how the band positions itself within them.
From the opening moments of Calling Ghostly Nations, the approach is clear. Jace Lasek and Olga Goreas braid their voices until the distinctions blur, creating a third presence that sits in the centre of the stereo field. Guitars arrive in layered textures rather than discrete riffs. Sheenah Ko’s keyboards fill the spaces the guitars leave open, adding colour without competing for attention. Gabriel Lambert’s bass lines ground the arrangements while Kevin Laing’s drums maintain a steady, unhurried pulse. The production, handled by Lasek at Breakglass Studios, is dense but breathable. Each element has room to resonate.
The record balances warmth with subtle unease. Chemin de la Baie swims in major-key harmonies and soft-focus synths, yet there’s a tension underneath, a sense that the glow might fade at any moment. The band’s long-standing ability to construct songs as architecture remains intact. Tracks unfold in deliberate sections, building toward crescendos that feel earned rather than imposed. Nothing rushes. Nothing overstays.
If the album has a centre of gravity, it’s In Hollywood. The song drops into a lower register, drums pushing against the tempo as a darker undertow creeps through the mix. The vocal sits closer to the microphone than elsewhere on the record, intimate enough to hear the air in the room. Lasek’s lyric circles possession and ambition, and the delivery carries a concrete edge that contrasts with the album’s prevailing drift. That contrast strengthens the surrounding material, making the hazier moments feel intentional rather than indistinct.
The interplay between Lasek and Goreas anchors the record. Their harmonies create a shared narrator, a voice that speaks from the middle ground rather than from any single perspective. On Carried It All Around, their blend softens a lyric about burdens into something like release. On Pontiac Spirits, voice and bass move as one shape, quietly propulsive. The pair has spent years mastering that combination of celestial and human, and here it feels especially grounded.
Lyrically, the album favours fragments over statements. Images of borders and distance. Communities under pressure. Sudden blooms of hope. The words are often obscured by reverb, but that ambiguity serves the theme. A ghost nation doesn’t announce itself through manifestos. It forms in the gaps, in the spaces listeners fill with their own meaning.
The band draws from a familiar lineage: vintage psychedelia, shoegaze textures, orchestral pop craft. There are moments where Beach House comes to mind, particularly in how keyboards and guitars interact. The grandeur nods to 1970s studio ambition, the kind that valued overtones and room sound. Yet The Besnard Lakes continue to sound like themselves first. The guitars ring in halos. The keyboards tilt the horizon. The rhythm section refuses to accelerate, even when the chords suggest it. That patience is part of the aesthetic, and the record rewards a proper sound system that can let the low end breathe and the high end shimmer.
As the sequence moves toward Give Us Our Dominion, the album’s ideas cohere. The final track introduces a bright, looping stringed figure that lifts the chorus without tipping into spectacle. The band seems to be thinking about ancestry and place, not as political statements but as felt vibrations. The song closes with a long exhale rather than a definitive ending. The room is still humming.
Not every moment lands with equal force. Battle Lines takes time to find its melody, and The Clouds Are Casting Shadows from the Sunlight leans heavily on texture at the expense of structure. But the album functions as a single arc, and those quieter passages give the standout tracks their charge. This is a record designed for full listens, one that reveals small production details on repeat plays.
The Besnard Lakes aren’t offering a map. They’re sketching a territory and asking listeners to walk it with them. Somewhere between the opening chord of Calling Ghostly Nations and the final exhale of Give Us Our Dominion, the outline of a community appears. On repeat listens, it feels less ghostly and more tangible. The nation gathers not through declarations but through sound shared in a room. If you can hear it, you’re already part of it.
Photo: Isabel Rancier
Share this :
