The Besnard Lakes Are the Last of the Great Thunderstorm Warnings

The Besnard Lakes - The Besnard Lakes Are the Last of the Great Thunderstorm Warnings
Critic Score
Based on 15 reviews
2021 Ratings: #353 / 753
User Score
Based on 95 ratings
2021 Rank: #656
Liked by 7 people
January 29, 2021 / Release Date
LP / Format
FatCat / Label
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CRITIC REVIEWS

90
Spill Magazine

Every track is generous, beautiful, and essential. If you use music as medicine, this record will give you what you need. If you want to be overtaken, transported, and delivered safely back home, TBLATLOTGTW is yours.

80
AllMusic
Written and recorded in the wake of Lasek's father's death, the overall tone is more life-affirming than mourning. It would be disingenuous to say the Besnards had been on a downswing prior to this, but in wrestling with mortality they tap into a well of vital energy that makes the group appear revitalized and full of vigor.
80
Uncut

On ...Last Of The Great Thunderstorm Warnings, we hear The Besnard Lakes make a very contemporary take on psychedelic music; wise to rock history but not in thrall to it, more interested in asking the big questions than senselessly adding to the canon.

80
Mojo

Thunderstorm Warnings doesn't put a foot wrong, delivering the big music with heart instead of bluster.

80
Northern Transmissions

The Besnard Lakes have always seemed to do whatever they wanted to but this album feels different. It’s defiantly inspired. The band is constantly flexing their muscles throughout, harmonically and melodically.

80
FLOOD Magazine
While it was inspired by actual death, it’s the creative rebirth of the band that gives even the darkest passages of this cinematic (and nearly feature-film length) record a hopeful sheen throughout.
80
The Sydney Morning Herald
On their first album in five years, the band delivers more lush psychedelica and moving songwriting – and, at 72 minutes long, this double LP is gloriously uncompromising.
80
Record Collector
Loss is the road to revelation on the sixth album from Montreal's under-regarded psych-rock stalwarts, back on gloriously expansive form to tackle life's biggies.
78
Beats Per Minute
It’s an evocative thrill ride and a captivating rumination on mortality that also asks questions of life afterwards. It isn’t an easy listen but it’ll soon become something you’re drawn towards time and time again.
70
PopMatters
Here, the ride is smooth enough that you never quite feel the acceleration of the vehicle. Nevertheless, there's an undeniable satisfaction in becoming one with the forward momentum.
70
Under the Radar

It's an album that will delight the band's fanbase, and there are some powerful and profound moments with arrangements that are beyond the realms of what would be considered standard rock music. This is serious music taking on weighty themes.

70
Exclaim!

Wisely abandoning the dissonant switch-ups of 2016's A Coliseum Complex Museum, Thunderstorm Warnings takes everything the Besnard Lakes have ever done well and provides it in abundance.

70
Classic Rock
The Besnard Lakes might test the listener’s patience at times, but their commendable commitment to monumental scale and ambition often results in something thrillingly beautiful.
65
Spectrum Culture

Of course, Thunderstorm Warnings has enough excellence going for it that no matter how much growth they display, the record is still a delight to spend time with.

60
The Arts Desk

Overall, The Besnard Lakes Are The Last Of The Great Thunderstorm Warnings comes across like a hard rock, prog-inclined Mercury Rev. Idiosyncratic, oblique and suffocating.

Valeyard
75

If you listen carefully you can still hear the delay from the guitars fading away in the distance.

werajek
70

Someone has drugged this album but I don't think we should call the police.

ecenb
67

A slow progressing, mostly instrumental neo-psychedelia album which I probably won't listen to again. But it still has some good songs included.

Fav Songs: Blackstrap, The Dark Side of Paradise, The Last of the Great Thunderstorm Warnings

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Contributions By
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Added on: October 22, 2020