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Review: 'Great Lakes'
'Wild Vision'   

-  Label: 'Loose Trucks'
-  Genre: 'Indie' -  Release Date: '22.1.16.'-  Catalogue No: 'LT.001'

Our Rating:
When this LP arrived I took one look at the artwork and assumed it would be a space rock album with maybe a slight glam edge judging by the Ziggy like lightning bolt by the song titles on the rear cover. I was almost totally wrong. As this the sixth album by Great Lakes is far more bucolic and laid back than the artwork suggested. I must point out that this is the Band Great Lakes fronted by Ben Crum and not any of the other bands they share a name with.

I'm reviewing this from number 77 of 327 copies of the album on vinyl that opens with Swim The River which is a rather bucolic laid back come down song with some nice semi acoustic guitars that sound slightly frazzled. Bird Flying is a lazy hazy quest for knowledge that is carefully paced and sounds a bit like the laid back side of Neil Young.

Kin To The Mountain is more laid back musing on what it's like to live on a mountain in old age the lyrics are a bit New age hippy which is a bit odd as they now live in Brooklyn rather than the bands original home of Athens Georgia. Wild Again is like a repressed memory of what it was once like to be slightly wild as this album really is not wild in any way.

The song is more of the bucolic new age style pop and as it builds towards its climax actually sounds like a Richard and Linda Thompson song from the period where they were starting to dabble in middle eastern sounds.

Nature Is Always True closes the a-side of the LP with a melancholic Belle & Sebastian style old very deep lyrical folk song that is just a little bit too background for its own good but would work fine as soundtrack music.

The B-side of the lp opens with I Stay, You Go that sounds like the wrong end of Fleetwood Mac with a dash or two of the Moody Blues at their most maudlin and yet sounds way too nice for the break up song it is and also goes on for a couple of minutes too long. Beauties Of the Way stands out by being the most up-beat and fastest thing on the album while still being rather too MOR and the instrumental break brings Dire Straits to mind which is never a good thing.

Blood On My Tooth isn't a song about Gingivitis but instead about getting into a fight and taking a beating over some very laid back and peaceful music it's an odd dichotomy that sort of works. The LP closes with Shot At And Missed like they are flipping you the bird for missing and not putting them out of their misery it's all a bit meek and mild Belle & Sebastian style western melodrama.

Great Lakes work best for me on the more laid back stuff that would work well as Soundtrack music. About two thirds of this album are pretty damn good and the other third are really not all that.

Find out more at https://www.facebook.com/Great-Lakes-127699500611431/?fref=ts
  author: simonovitch

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