no. 10: The Besnard Lakes - The Besnard Lakes Are The Last Of The Great Thunderstorm Warnings (2021)
The first gatefold :D
Oh, and the sides are named as follows-- A: Near Death; B: Death; C: After Death; D: Life
I saw this album on Suuns' instagram story in 2021 - and this is basically the only reason why I keep my instagram account. Seeing what my favourite artists are listening to is another of my preferred ways to get recommendations. I also forgot to mention on the post for The Witness that it was engineered by Jace Lasek, and after listening to The Besnard Lakes once you start seeing them pop up in every Canadian album ever. lol.
...Last of the Great Thunderstorm Warnings is just massive, epic, psych-prog-post-rock mastery. It's hard to describe this album as anything but "huge." Watch the trailer!!!
I notice that the music I listen to tends to skew more recent as I'm usually seeking out releases within the year and often these are from artists that are debuting or have been around for fewer than 5-10 years. Discovering a band who at this point have been around for 20 years is an incredible experience where I get to meet them at a very refined and established point in their lives - and this was illustrated even better getting to see them live last year. They were so cohesive on stage and really it's just nice and hopeful to see people enjoying themselves so much while performing! It was one of the best shows I'd been to (even though they didn't perform the 13 minute drone outro to the title track of this album... π).
Favourite Tracks:
"Blackstrap"
"Raindrops"
"Our Heads, Our Hearts On Fire Again"
"Feuds With Guns"
"Last Of The Great Thunderstorm Warnings"