Great Lake Swimmers - Uncertain Country (2023)

Uncertain Country was another one of my Marco Polo Platters, and I bought this because it looked cool. I figured it would be artsy and independent. The back cover showed both Factor, and the government of Canada logos, which is code for artistic grants. I'm not judging at all (not yet anyway), I think it's great there's support for the arts. I just hoped it sounded good too. I'm going to give this a couple of spins before I sit on my stool of judgment and spew my nonsense. I am really looking forward to this one. I love the anticipation of the unknown. 

First a little homework. For those in the know you can skip ahead to the parts where I jibber jabber about the record. Nothing I'm about to jot down will come as a surprise to the band's fans. I am for the most part largely oblivious to a lot of new stuff that's out there. I hear bits and pieces, often through my son who has a pretty eclectic CD collection. Yes, CD that's his media of choice. I like most of what I hear. I just don't pretend to be in the know, or part of the gaggle of cool kids. The curse of being the last boomer on the bus who now just spends a lot of time meandering down memory lane. Not that I'm above making new memories, I just don't really know what's going on, and that's okay. 

Although it was a surprise to find out Great Lake Swimmers have been around since 2003. The band, I'll call it a band ... although it seems more accurate to call it an extension of Tony Dekker's musical vision. From what I can glean the band released it's first couple albums on an indie imprint, weewerk, then got picked up by Nettwerk and spent a decade with the label releasing a half dozen records. With Uncertain Country it looks like the band pulled everything in house and licensed the album to Pheromone Recordings. Which is where I jumped in ... although around the time I found this one, they released Caught Light in the fall of 2025 which I'm curious about. 

I always find it a strange experience to think about the passage of time, particularly as it relates to music and the meshing of place and time into musical muscle memory. Twenty years is a long time. Let's use 1973 to 1993. I mean, it's boggling to think of the changes that occurred. Some of my favourite bands as a kid were nothing like their early selves later in their careers. Now we get to the part where you get to go, "Okay Boomer" and it won't be an insult, but hear me out at least. It seems like a lot of  new pop music has for better or worse been preserved in amber. It's like artists are fine with mining the past, but actually pushing the genre forward seems like a Herculean task that isn't worth the effort. Instead there is a wonderful messing about with colours and textures that actually do create something new within a familiar framework.

Great Lake Swimmers are alchemists of sorts they're crafting wonderful dreamy pop songs (although apparently this is what new folk rock sounds like now) and have been mining the same vein (yes, I did go and do a cursory sample of a few bits and bobs from their other albums) for decades to great effect. This is not a shot, the band knows what it wants. It's intrinsically tied to the artist to be honest. I saw a great quote (which I will try and paraphrase) from Drew Arnott around the time Strange Advance dropped 4 (2021) which was a hybrid of old and new songs. In response to a comment about how cohesive the songs sounded he said that he only knew how to write one way.

Now, I've spun Uncertain Country several times, and I really like it ... a lot. Of course me being me I immediately started trying to pigeonhole the band, and my first thought when I heard the title track was, "Holy shit, this sounds like Interpol (another great band who hasn't messed around with their formula for a couple of decades either). It was really just the first song, and then I started thinking about all of the kissing cousins, from The Lumineers, to Fleet Foxes and then the distant cousins like The Small Glories and The Dead South and then I started thinking about Vampire Weekend and even Cage the Elephant... then I realized I was missing the point and was distracting myself from enjoying the record for what it was, not who it reminded me of.

So I picked up the needle and dropped it at the beginning and sat on the couch in front of the speakers holding the album sleeve in my hands reading along and scanning the credits. The album cover is cool, and the insert is really nicely laid out. Initially it kind of irritated me that the credits weren't printed with the lyrics, but I actually think the layout works better this way so I was wrong. One side contains the lyrics and the other is nothing but credits and notes. I love credits like this. Speaking of credits, I suppose the one I should call out is Joe Lapinski. I won't pretend I'd heard of him before, but he co-produced Uncertain Country in addition to engineering and mixing. This is a really great sounding record. 

You may be thinking to yourself, "Did I just read all of that and the only bits relevant to the album were a couple of cursory comments about 'liking the record'?" Yes, you did, and at the risk (hardly a risk, more of a certainty) of being pedantic, I'll say it again. The whole album is really solid, and the songs are varied enough to keep things moving without sounding repetitive. This is a tasty slow burn that seems to know exactly where it wants to go. Am I a new convert? Sure, why not. I will tell people about this one for sure. I'll stream their stuff too ... not enough to put money in Tony's pocket, but you never know. I've been really lucky lately with some of the records I've picked up. The joy of discovery is a big part of why I love music. Great Lake Swimmers make great music.