Foam Lake is an actual town in Saskatchewan, Canada. Foam Lake the band resides not far away in Saskatoon. It's one thing to have a pair of brothers in a band which always makes me think about how impossible it would be traveling with my own brother on tour for months. The petty family bullshit you'd inevitably bring to millions of hours on the road and the fights about who's going to get to sleep on the bed at the motel this time. Foam Lake is made up entirely of brothers, four of them as a matter of fact. My wife likes to bring up how great Canada is and I'll have to add this to her list of examples because somehow in the US, the same four siblings might grow up hating each other. But maybe there's a fifth brother who hates music and plays hockey. Always a black sheep.
This single side, "Young" bursts with chords and a great fading off effect as this warbles around on this paper thin orange flexi disc, but despite of the format it's packed with huge slick production and thick, clear radio crisp vocals. They pack a crazy energy on this flexi, blowing the shit out of the static filled imperfection. It might have been a deliberate choice to go so polished here because of the inherent surface noise of this thing, sounding like an artifact from another century when they used to sing about their accomplishments, proud of them in a multi-tracked way. Like Pinback, there's a gloss and polish that's been worked over for months, a mysterious sound full of layered guitar work all the way from the quiet bursts to taking a flying leap. Dense prog rock vocals that go for a deep space galaxy sound - even the kick has a sort of relaxed thunder under this hiss. The format brings another level to the processed proceedings, it can really sound like its arrived from another planet.
Pick this up from the band direct on their site. These guys are up to a new album so prepare yourselves. Their previous one is below:
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