New personal horizons are explored, reverting to the sound of the 70s.
Led by frontman and founder Tony Dekker, Great Lake Swimmers have been around since the early 2000s. The band has evolved through a shifting lineup but maintained a consistent homespun sound captured on their nine studio albums, the latest of which is Caught Light.
True to their tradition of recording in unique, rural environments (previous recording locations include old silos and country churches), Caught Light was recorded in a studio in the Ganaraska Forest in Ontario. However, there were also some changes to their usual approach, with Dekker passing on greater responsibilities to producer Darcy Yates (intimately linked to their band as their former bassist, almost twenty years ago). For the recording, Yates took it upon himself to select both the studio and the backing band for a lightning-fast process that took a mere three days for tracking and an additional two to complete overdubs.
With Caught Light, the band sought to capture the warm sound of the early 70s, taking artists like John Martyn as a reference point (Dekker made sure everyone involved listened to his album Bless the Weather before the recording). In addition to this, one of the defining characteristics of the recording was the importance given to spontaneity in both the writing and recording process. Small mistakes were allowed to become part of the overall sound rather than micro-editing and polishing every last detail. The result is full of small nuances that might have been lost in the search for perfection.
One More Dance Around the Sun, the album’s lead single, is also one of its strongest compositions (along with the title track). The song is about the joy to be found in familiarity and repetition, a feeling which might only come with time, after long travels and the return to the places of one’s youth. A note of melancholy is almost inevitable in this acceptance of this simple yet elusive realisation, and the song captures this perfectly. But for all the quiet satisfaction that repetition might bring in life, when it comes to the album as placed in the context of Great Lakes Swimmers’ work over the years, further variety would have been welcome, especially as the tracklist progresses towards the half-hour mark. Even though the exploration of 70s rock, folk and pop already offers a twist on the band’s classic sound, the overall result seems too ponderously atmospheric at times.
Caught Light is a statement of where the band is after the COVID pandemic and where they might venture in the future, with a long road still ahead. With the exploration of new sounds, an interesting door is opened to future innovation, which would certainly bring about a freshness any band can benefit from twenty years into their career.
