When most of us picture a band hard at work on their latest record, the picture that our minds conjure up is either a pro recording studio, or a mass of equipment strewn haphazardly all over someone’s house. Nobody envisions a band mic checking in a castle, ancient theatre or church.

Yet these are just three of the locations upon which Great Lake Swimmers descended to record their fourth album, Lost Channels.

“Initially, when I first started recording songs in different locations, it was just for the acoustics,” says frontman and original Great Lake Swimmer Tony Dekker, “I wanted to get a sound that was a really nice natural reverb, the kind of sound you can’t get out of a box. As it went on, we realised we were picking up environmental sounds and we were also documenting places. Over time, that became important too, to tie in what we were doing to the geography of where we were. The room and the places where we record have become like another member of the band or another instrument. It’s a bit magical. It adds another layer to the song.”

Dekker was raised in rural Canada, far from the cafes, venues and record stores of Toronto. Now a resident of his homeland’s largest city, Dekker finds himself torn between urbanity and nature, a conflict that drives his desire to seek out the best recording spaces that history and nature can offer him. “

That has a lot to do with it,” he agrees. “It’s about having respect for the history of a place. Being in places that are charged with an intangible energy helps me to dig a little deeper when recording a song. On this record we were able to record in [Singer Castle] in the Thousand Islands region of Ontario and upstate New York, where Lake Ontario empties into the St Lawrence River. There are all these small islands scattered throughout the area. The castle was modelled after a castle described in a novel from the 18th century. It was a pretty incredible structure.” Singer Castle seems like it became an added member of the band, its bells contributing the passage that marks the midpoint of Lost Channels.

Dekker’s rural background is clearly evident in the gentle, organic nature of his band’s music. “I think there’s a certain beautiful tension between urban life and rural life,” he says. “Especially having come from a rural upbringing and now being in one of Canada’s largest urban centres, it definitely creates a sort of conflict… I don’t really come from a musical family but I think that being raised on a farm close to the woods and understanding weather patterns and the seasonal rhythms of farming has definitely given me an insight. It’s in my bones. I realised that this music is more a way of being than a genre.”

When the first chords of Lost Channels usher forth, some might be forgiven for thinking they’ve been presented with the wrong band, perhaps Out Of Time-era R.E.M, rather than the ghostly, glacial folk of Great Lake Swimmers. ‘Palmistry’ jangles along at quite a pace before Dekker’s familiar voice hits reassures that this is indeed Great Lake Swimmers, albeit a more juiced up one than we’re used to. ‘Pulling On A Line’ and ‘She Comes To Me In Dreams’ follow this pattern, raising the muscle and tempo while still carrying the brooding shadows of the band’s earlier work.

“I didn’t set out with a clear plan in mind,” says Dekker. “I brought the songs to the band with just acoustic guitar and voice after I’d written them and from there we just fleshed out the arrangements. It was a fascinating process to watch the songs go from just guitar and voice to, in some cases, up-tempo songs with a full band.”

Side A is brought to a close by ‘The Chorus In The Underground’, a song that could almost be described as sprightly were the titular chorus not comprised of the names of the recently deceased. But the Southern Gothic element to Dekker’s lyrics and the scratchy fiddle and banjo only add to the song’s authenticity. More of a twang in Dekker’s delivery and it could conceivably be channelling from a transistor radio in some 50s backwater. Once Castle Singer’s bells fade out, Great Lake Swimmers move more towards their more familiar, quieter haunts.

“This record, to me, is really a side A and side B record,” says Dekker, “like an old vinyl. Side A has, relatively speaking for us, more up-tempo tracks and side B is what people have come to expect from us, the more down-tempo and quiet tracks. To me it’s both but both are contained within a side. And when you hear side B it makes you revisit side A and listen to it another way, and vice versa.”

It’s always refreshing to hear a musician such as Dekker speak of a love of vinyl. As the world strives towards convenience and portability, some holdouts still maintain their devotion. “Personally, I still like the traditional way of looking at an album as one continuous movement,” says Dekker, “I still think vinyl is the best way to listen to music, from an audiophile perspective. I’m also definitely in the MP3 world and I’m all for that, especially the economical aspect. And MP3s are getting better now with MP4 and we’re starting to approach lossless quality. But it still has a ways to go and I’m not completely satisfied with how songs sound in that format. People say that CDs are going away but it’s still nice to have something tactile, artwork to look at and a lyric book to read.

“We put effort into the packaging of our records. I think people still appreciate that. MP3s are super convenient but I hope music doesn’t get to a point where it’s disposable.”
Even if music does become disposable, Great Lake Swimmers are doing a good job of ensuring that they will be among those excused from that undignified fate. Each record the band releases is greeted even more enthusiastically than the last. Ongiara was hailed as their masterpiece but Lost Channels is overtaking it rapidly.

The pressure of continuing this run of form doesn’t faze Dekker. “That doesn’t even factor into what I do,” he says, “I would be writing and playing songs regardless. To me, it’s more about reaching new creative places and developing songs and trying new ways of creating sounds through environments.”

And as their new masterpiece comes to a gentle end with the heartbreakingly beautiful ‘Unison Falling Into Harmony’, the effect is akin to a comforting darkness slowly descending and the late hour realisation that all is right with the world.