So....Great.

A post - very late I'm afraid - about the Great Lake Swimmers show last Sunday. It was one of those beautiful marriages of band and venue (the ex-church St James Community Hall being just where you want to hear this sort of loveliness), and we were lucky enough to be in the front row - not usually what I would choose to be honest, but we figured heck, why not. People started sneaking onto the floor around us which made the atmosphere even more congenial. At least, it did because there was no fire. If there was a fire, their bodies would have provided nice soft things to stampede over...but I digress.
Kate Maki opened up for the GLS and she was a perfect choice. Clever songwriting, lovely voice, and a warm, funny personality that quickly won the audience (that I suspect was largely unfamiliar with her music) over. And the Great Lake Swimmers were fantastic - nice selection of material from Ongiara and their self titled album, and a lot of new stuff from their brand new CD, Lost Channels. The new material seems to have moved a bit away from the etherial beauty of Ongiara, but it sounds good ... I did manage to knock off a couple of videos of their new tracks. I swear the stage was lit by one 40W bulb, which made videoing kind of...imperfect...but I was enjoying things too much to fussing with taping anyway. Besides which, sitting in the front row, you end up feeling like you are being invasive, no matter how stealth your camerawork. But I quickly realized my black-plastic-covered camera is far less invasive than the KA-KLICK, KA-KLICK, KA-KLICK of the digital SLR being used by the woman on the floor infront of me. Do digital cameras actually need to make noise or have they added sound just to make them feel more like film cameras? Who knows. Whatever, ultimately nothing could detract from the beauty of the sounds from the stage.

Here is New Light, from their brand new album Lost Channels. Enjoy.