Hot disc: Q&A with The Besnard Lakes’ Olga Goreas
The Besnard Lakes’ music is as vast and dramatic as the remote region of Northern Saskatchewan for which the band is named. Listen to the wall of sound captured on this Pitchfork-approved outfit’s third release, The Besnard Lakes Are The Roaring Night (Jagjaguwar Records), and you’ll understand why Jace Lasek and wife Olga Goreas were tapped to score actor Mark Ruffalo’s directorial film debut Sympathy for Delicious. We spoke with Goreas, the voice behind lead-off single “Albatross,” from her home in Montreal.Tell me about the album, what is the process? “There isn’t really a pre-production process so much. Jace likes to follow a storyline. When I’m writing I have things that come from personal experience. I keep a journal and I look through and find something in it, and it always seems to fit within the songs, and it fits within the story that Jace had in mind as well. It’s a pretty interesting process. There is for sure, I would say, a little bit of creative tension because we have a bit of a difference there.”
Any particular track that you really kind of butted heads on? I can only imagine with a husband and wife team, the same thing would happen in the studio. “Maybe “Albatross.” That song is from my personal experience. I did have the original words that I pulled it from, and there are some lines that just didn’t quite fit in there. It’s kind of like: “No, maybe leave that one out”. That one may have had a little bit more of a kind of crazy energy to it.”
There is a theme to this disc… “From the last album, and carried over from our first record. There’s a story of these spies, one of them is following the other one, and whether it’s real or not comes into it as well. And there’s this continuing idea of receiving radio transmissions and these coded signals, which is something that I know Jace has really been interested in. There’s a hope and despair thing always happening as well. And it’s whether love or hatred wins out….”
Out of curiosity, do you listen to vinyl or CDs at home? “We have quite the vinyl collection.”
If you were the Dark Horses (the band’s second album), and now you’re the Roaring Night, what are you next? “We originally weren’t going to go with that title, but it just kind of presented itself in such a way that we decided we had to do it. It was originally going to be Let the Night Roar, and we found out that that title was taken. And so we’re like, Well then you know, screw that! We Are The Roaring Night [laughs]. Jace actually came up with it, and we thought you know, that perfect.”
The Besnard Lakes Are The Roaring Night is out today (jagjaguar.com), and the band is playing at The Horseshoe Tavern in Toronto on March 11, and Montreal’s Il Motore on March 12.
, and you’ll understand why Jace Lasek and wife Olga Goreas were tapped to score actor Mark Ruffalo’s directorial film debut Sympathy for Delicious. We spoke with Goreas, the voice behind lead-off single “Albatross,” from her home in Montreal.Tell me about the album, what is the process? “There isn’t really a pre-production process so much. Jace likes to follow a storyline. When I’m writing I have things that come from personal experience. I keep a journal and I look through and find something in it, and it always seems to fit within the songs, and it fits within the story that Jace had in mind as well. It’s a pretty interesting process. There is for sure, I would say, a little bit of creative tension because we have a bit of a difference there.”
Any particular track that you really kind of butted heads on? I can only imagine with a husband and wife team, the same thing would happen in the studio. “Maybe “Albatross.” That song is from my personal experience. I did have the original words that I pulled it from, and there are some lines that just didn’t quite fit in there. It’s kind of like: “No, maybe leave that one out”. That one may have had a little bit more of a kind of crazy energy to it.”
There is a theme to this disc... “From the last album, and carried over from our first record. There’s a story of these spies, one of them is following the other one, and whether it’s real or not comes into it as well. And there’s this continuing idea of receiving radio transmissions and these coded signals, which is something that I know Jace has really been interested in. There’s a hope and despair thing always happening as well. And it’s whether love or hatred wins out….”
Out of curiosity, do you listen to vinyl or CDs at home? “We have quite the vinyl collection.”
If you were the Dark Horses (the band’s second album), and now you’re the Roaring Night, what are you next? “We originally weren’t going to go with that title, but it just kind of presented itself in such a way that we decided we had to do it. It was originally going to be Let the Night Roar, and we found out that that title was taken. And so we’re like, Well then you know, screw that! We Are The Roaring Night [laughs]. Jace actually came up with it, and we thought you know, that perfect.”
The Besnard Lakes Are The Roaring Night is out today (jagjaguar.com), and the band is playing at The Horseshoe Tavern in Toronto on March 11, and Montreal’s Il Motore on March 12.){kind=link}