Great Lake Swimmers

(Above [L-R]: Almog Ben-David, Tony Dekker, Erik Arnesen and Colin Huebert. Photo by Jeff Fasano)

From an abandoned silo to a high-vaulted church come the Great Lake Swimmers in all their bittersweet glory. Their first two albums are the perfect accompaniment to firefly waltzes or brooding November dawns. Swept from the nooks and crannies of songwriter/vocalist Tony Dekker’s grey matter, the Great Lake Swimmers herald a hushed but powerful one-two combination of rural Canadian might and resiliency.

The Toronto band’s self-titled debut, a DIY record—now being reissued by their new label, Misra—was recorded almost entirely in a left-for-the-weeds grain silo in southern Ontario.

“I just wanted to record in an atmosphere and really document a place and time,” says the 28-year-old Dekker. “The silo was what I was looking for because I wanted to come back to the area where I grew up to find the space and feel of these songs. So we basically set up in the middle of nowhere, and just started recording for a few days because it just seemed like there was no one else around. But with small towns … even when you feel like no one’s watching, there are always eyes on you. Sure enough, right before we finished, the owner came in, fuming, asking who the hell we thought we were. Then he took a second look at me. It turns out he was the father of one of my old childhood friends. That’s when he gave me a good shake and said ‘You’re lucky you’re you, because I was getting ready to kick your ass.’”

Capturing the ominous flutter of trespassing, the constant hum of crickets and the slow banging of steel against galvanized walls, the record’s sonic effect is ghostly, soothing and mesmerizing, like eavesdropping on a spectral sing-along in a pitch-black meadow.

In fact, Dekker described making the first album as being “lost in the dark, trying to feel my way around.” Luckily he found a way to make their follow-up, Bodies and Minds, with the same sense of place and immediacy. Where Great Lake Swimmers found the music in the land, Bodies and Minds brings the land indoors; fittingly in a lakeside church. Once again Dekker and Co. harness the pantheistic beauty of their environment with understated instrumentation and achingly exquisite lyrics, filling the hollows between notes with a hopeful atmosphere. It’s easy to feel the warmth amidst the starkness because of Dekker’s ability to tap into the heart of simplicity. When asked what he thought people should know about his records, he pauses for a long time and slowly answers, “These are albums made by people.”