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With Until in Excess, Imperceptible UFO, The Besnard Lakes create a distinct and dreamy headspace, an enigmatic and somehow familiar placelessness. It happens in such a way that both the close and casual listener find themselves immersed in the generous sonic vision, one moment as timeless as the next.

The second album LAKE recorded for K, Let's Build a Roof [KLP213], included a song by drummer/multi-instrumentalist Lindsay Schief many consider one of its highlights, "Gravel". When the band returned from their U.S. tour following the release of Let's Build a Roof "Gravel" had a new fluid soulful feel to it that struck resident Dub Narcotic Studio producer Selector Dub Narcotic (aka Calvin Johnson) as a ripe candidate for the Dub Narcotic Disco Plate series of 7" 45 rpm phonograph records. He approached the band about the idea and they agreed to give it a try. The revamped "Gravel" was recorded at Dub Narcotic Studio, comprising the A side of this release. Flip it over and hear the Selector Dub Narcotic version, "Re-Grade", complete with a new melodica infused melody.

Songs for the documentary Welcome to Pine Point came to fruition after Michael Simons, one of its creative directors and a longtime friend of The Besnard Lakes' Jace Lasek, told the band about this web-based project he was working on -- about a mining town that had been abandoned in northern Canada --and asked if the band would be interested in providing some music for it. Simons also asked if the band would cover "We're Here for a Good Time (Not a Long Time)" by Canadian rock band Trooper. Herewith is their interpretation available for the first time as physical media. "The Corner" is one of two songs written for the end credits of the film "Memories Corner". This is the song that wasn't chosen. Also a Besnard Lakes rarity, this song is available for the first and only time on You Live in the City. "Special thanks to: Audrey Fouche, the director of Memories Corner, and its producers; Welcome to Pine Point creators Michael Simons and Paul Shoebridge and the National Film Board of Canada. These projects were both absolutely a pleasure to work on, and we hope you, dear listeners, enjoy these offerings." -- The Besnard Lakes

LAKE's newest full-length album, Giving and Receiving [KLP228] soars with beautiful melodies and gentle, yet deliberate instrumentation. Written partially while staying at a little cabin in Northern Sweden, which band member Ashley Eriksson says is the only place she's ever truly heard silence, songs like "Skeleton Costume," and "Pilgrim's Day" were born in a shed there, and have the creaky barn wood/fresh air sound to prove it.

Eli Moore and Ashley Eriksson's radiant songwriting chemistry is on display on both sides of the new 7" single by LAKE. Recorded by Tucker Martine before Oh, The Places We'll Go [KLP196] and Let's Build a Roof [KLP213], this single represents the fluidity of sounds that LAKE operates with: both songs are hopeful in different ways ? "You Are Alone" (featuring Moore's sympathetic voice and calm keys) is a hand on your shoulder, and "Higher Than Merry" (featuring Eriksson's contagious glee and a kaleidoscope of percussions, horns, and animal sounds) is a hand that pulls you into a Technicolor dream. Known to change tempos and styles on an album, LAKE throws a sharp curveball for this edition of K's International Pop Underground series of 7" singles. Your hand makes the transition; flipping Side A to Side B is like opening a letter from a familiar friend: insightful and cheerful.

There is a war now. The message has been sent through short wave in code. The Besnard Lakes twisting chronicle, or fever dream, of spies, double agents, novelists and aspiring rock gods has turned violent. Loyalty, dishonor, love, hatred all seen through the eyes of two spies, fighting a war that may not be real. One follows the other as they receive coded messages and spread destruction.The city is burning, and it's to the benefit of music obsessives everywhere. Once again, the husband-and-wife duo of Olga Goreas and Jace Lasek has crafted a majestic, sprawling vision of guitar bombast and captivating pop experiments. With the aid of Besnard members Kevin Laing on drums and Richard White on guitar, The Besnard Lakes Are the Roaring Night is a dense, ambitious recording, experimenting, as always, with the studio as instrument.The Besnard Lakes Are the Roaring Night calls upon the influence of ELO and finer parts of the Alan Parsons Project in its orchestration. Still helped by the Ghost of Beach Boys Past, the album is more Dennis Wilson than Brian, and more Peter Green Fleetwood Mac than Lindsay Buckingham. The album is a dark bliss-out that folds the eerie guitar epics of the Montreal band's breakthrough into a wall of affected drones and atmospherics, but with a toughened immediacy and grit that gives the form a much-needed shove over the cliffs, making for a haunting, provocative swan dive into the crushing tide.

A standout track and the first single from Montreal's The Besnard Lakes' upcoming longplayer, The Besnard Lakes Are The Roaring Night, "Albatross" has all the swagger of a Stevie Nicks-led Fleetwood Mac classic or Roy Orbison reimagined as a rollicking, snakeskin-booted Mazzy Star -- dousing it all in gas and throwing the match as we hear its tale of Vancouver's skid row and its inhabitants.On the flip we find "Four Long Lines," a non-album cut that not so much exists within the dark grooves of the vinyl as it does float just above the stereo, embodying the extraterrestrial encounter the song cryptically details. "Saw an alien/On the street/At dawn...Saw Aliens/In the sky/Called out to them, " breathes Jace Lasek's otherworldly falsetto, which stays just beyond definition skating on top of what could be a basement-tape lost cut from Eno's Another Green World.

Eli Moore and Ashley Eriksson's radiating songwriting chemistry serves as the foundation for LAKE. Let's Build a Roof is like a travelogue of the places they went, the stories they encountered on the way, and the memories that were unearthed from those experiences, be they good or bad. Their retro-jingly pop aesthetic is applied to thicker instrumentation and tempo shifts that fracture into kaleidoscopic sounds and harmonies. A bell rings, a door opens, and an ominous chord is struck on the piano. The strong force of a pop journey is about to begin. Let's Build a Roof proves that wonder and beauty aren't just kids stuff. This is LAKE's most sophisticated record to date.

Swan Lake is the musical group featuring celebrated songwriter-mystics Daniel Bejar (of Destroyer and New Pornographers), Spencer Krug (of Sunset Rubdown and Wolf Parade) and Carey Mercer (of Frog Eyes and Blackout Beach). While their debut album was a beautifully-weaved mash-up of their disparate song-writing styles, often with layer upon layer of various melodies and stylistics thrown into a collaborative cauldron to magical, and at times discordant effect, their second album Enemy Mine reflects a more stripped-down, more deliberate approach to collaboration. It's as if they really tried to just make nice songs together.