GREAT LAKES – WAYS OF ESCAPE

Great Lakes are yet another branch on the abundant Animal 6 tree. Now with only one founding member – songwriter Ben Crum (is he that hard to work with?) – but an expanded mebership of up to eleven, Great Lakes obviously shares the collective Elephant 6 ethos. With help from members of Of Montreal, Japancakes, Elf Power and Mice Parade to name but a few, he is not lacking for indie cred support. Album number four sees Crum and company plant themselves firmly in the post-Gram Parson school. Early seventies inspired folk-rock with a hint of paisley (rosemary and thyme?). Their simple acoustic cover of John Prine’s Sour Grapes plays well, counter-balancing their pedal-steel and Lindsay Buckingham inspired guitar work elsewhere – Ghost Brother in particular. Crum’s voice suffers a little from an unusually dry recorded sound; indeed given the era of their influence, the album is soft in tones as expected, but harsh in recorded sound. This does at times detract from a set of tunes that Parson’s might be glad to listen to under the Joshua tree.

***1/2