Great Lakes: Wild Vision CD/LP (Loose Trucks Records)
Release date: January 22, 2016
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Bio: Great Lakes formed in 1996 in Athens, Georgia and has been based in Brooklyn, NY since 2002. The band has released 4 albums. A 5th record called Wild Vision will come out in January 2016 on the band’s own label, Loose Trucks. For this new album singer-songwriter-guitarist Ben Crum reconvened the same lineup of musicians who helped him make 2010's Ways of Escape: vocalist Suzanne Nienaber, drummer Kevin Shea, bassist David Lerner and keyboardist Joe McGinty.
While Great Lakes' early records traded in a whimsical, light-hearted psychedelia, with their 3rd and 4th albums, 2006's Diamond Times and 2010's Ways of Escape, the band gradually gravitated toward more personal songs, with a darker tone. That pattern continues with Wild Vision. Of the band's musical evolution, Crum explains, "I feel like I'm past the point of citing influences, or of discussing what happened that made me go from writing carefree psych-pop to this much darker, weightier music I'm making now. What I can say is that I’ve been doing this for 20 years, and every album I've done has been a carefully deliberate artistic statement, for better or worse."
While Great Lakes' early records traded in a whimsical, light-hearted psychedelia, with their 3rd and 4th albums, 2006's Diamond Times and 2010's Ways of Escape, the band gradually gravitated toward more personal songs, with a darker tone. That pattern continues with Wild Vision. Of the band's musical evolution, Crum explains, "I feel like I'm past the point of citing influences, or of discussing what happened that made me go from writing carefree psych-pop to this much darker, weightier music I'm making now. What I can say is that I’ve been doing this for 20 years, and every album I've done has been a carefully deliberate artistic statement, for better or worse."