Category:
Roots / Folk

Try if you like:
Cowboy Junkies, Iron & Wine, My Morning Jacket, Red House Painters, Shearwater

It’s springtime! The sun is out, people are wearing less clothes and patios all across this land are filling up. And The Great Lake Swimmers’ beautiful new album, New Wild Everywhere may just be the soundtrack for these warming days. 

New Wild Everywhere opens with a surprise: a waltz for the uncertain. 'Think That You Might Be Wrong' feels immediately like a departure for the band. New Wild Everywhere is stylistically very different from the four previous Great Lake Swimmers releases; for one, it was recorded in an actual recording studio as opposed to a boat or in any number of other places previously used by the band. In this case, Tony Dekker’s voice is given free range to run wild and this album is bigger, warmer, and more fun. Where past Great Lake Swimmers’ albums lounged in ambience and fuzz, New Wild Everywhere is bombastic and warm, rich and surprisingly clean. 

But in the face of all this new, bright bombast lies the true heart of what makes Tony Dekker one of Canada’s best songwriters—beautiful lyrics. Look no further than the beautiful 'The Great Exhale' and the true gem of the album, 'Easy Come Easy Go', a rocker for love at the end of the boom. There are love songs to Toronto ('Parkdale Blues') and French ditties ('Les Champs De Progineture' is the translation of the band's own 'Fields of Progeny') and odes to the victims of the BP oil spill ('Ballad of a Fisherman’s Wife'). 

Long term fans of the band may miss some of the low-fi intimacy of previous releases and those moments of folk bliss to get lost in, but after a few listens to New Wild Everywhere even the most dyed-in-the-wool fans should start to appreciate this beautiful turning point. 

And a song to waltz to—who doesn’t want to waltz their way into spring?