The Besnard Lakes The Besnard Lakes are the Dark Horse

At Uncle Fester's late Saturday night, The Besnard Lakes opened their set by unleashing a booming collective drone and a blast of mist from a strategically-placed fog machine. It was quite an introduction, but it nevertheless fit perfectly with the band's sound: big, brash, theatrical, hazy, dream-like, mysterious. \nHailing from Montreal, The Besnard Lakes are the latest in this decade's seemingly endless run of excellent Canadian indie rock. Like co-nationals Arcade Fire and Broken Social Scene, they are a somewhat-large band (six members, although only five were present at Fester's) that seasons their traditional rock elements (electric guitars, drums, etc.) with baroque flourishes (violins, horns, flutes, saxophones). But that's where the similarities end. The Besnard Lakes have crafted their own unique sound, with the sweet, Pet Sounds-like male-female vocal harmonies of married duo Jace Lasek and Olga Goreas overrun by massive power chords and squalling space rock. And, fortunately, this crossing of Brian Wilson and Spiritualized goes together like peanut butter and jelly.\nPerhaps the clearest example of this is "Disaster," the first track on The Besnard Lakes Are The Dark Horse, the band's second and newest album. Opening with Lasek's falsetto croon and easygoing acoustic strumming, a peaceful bit of horn, violin and rhythm guitar are added -- then, just before the two minute mark, a buzzing electric guitar descends on the proceedings like killer bees attacking a picnic, and things fall into a loping sing-along with two overlapping choruses ("c'mon, baby, c'mon" and "you've got disaster on your mind"). Throughout Dark Horse, honeyed voices drip lyrics vaguely hinting at apocalypse, disillusion and betrayal (espionage and war appear as major themes) and are accompanied by complex chamber pop orchestrations that, in turn, give way to sweeping guitars, drums and choruses. This gets a little monotonous after a while, making the latter half of the album a little less striking than the first -- but hey, its hard to complain about lovely melodies and crunching guitars.\nBy they way, a bonus bit of info from Saturday: The Besnard Lakes do an on-target cover of Fleetwood Mac's "You Make Loving Fun." Who knew?