Category:
Roots / Folk

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

•   Your Rocky Spine

Ongiara is the third album for the Toronto area band Great Lake Swimmers. This is an album that should take off with the amount of praise bands like My Morning Jacket and Iron & Wine have been getting in the last few years. Great Lake Swimmers have that sort of eye to detail when it comes to sonically pleasing material. The band is led by Tony Dekker and his songwriting is quite original in context. The arrangements and instrumentation on Ongiara is a triumph as well. If you just want a quick overview of the sound here check out "Where In The World Are You". It has some lovely strings alongside a great acoustic guitar riff. Vocal harmonies are the key to this one as well. As will past Great Lake Swimmers albums you will need to listen to Ongiara a couple times in order to get caught up in the beauty. It seems that repeated listens are always required for the more complicated song patterns as demonstrated here. Tony's voice leads the bands direction, which envelope his songs very nicely. 

Great Lake Swimmers are definitely not for everyone. In fact, you will probably know from this review if you will get into their mellow side of orchestral folk music.