Ongiara is a confidently made, achingly beautiful record.  Full text...

A gripe previously voiced about Great Lake Swimmers is that despite sounding beautiful they lacked substance. This time around, that charge won't stick. Yes, the music is sublime, but there is far more to it than that.  Full text...

Named after a band of lunatics/heroes whose aim to swim the great lakes of Canada is where singer/songwriter Tony Dekker gleaned the name from for his own brand of folky nature hymns. Thankfully there isn't a pair of tight Speedos in sight. Or verrucas.  Full text...

"Stop, listen, and feel," Tony Dekker, the main creative force behind Great Lake Swimmers, suggests on "There Is a Light," one of ten tracks on Ongiara, the band's third full-length. It just so happens that's the best way to take in the band's music. Not to get all Stephen Colbert, but this music is just as much felt as it is heard -- a transfixing ambience to get lost in for a short while.  Full text...

Ongiara finds Great Lake Swimmers filling out their sound, bowing to recent acts like Grizzly Bear and the down-tempo offerings of Papercuts, yet still preserving the guitar-driven, web-delicate qualities that made the first two albums so endearing.  Full text...

Far from the hollow strumming and open-chord shenanigans commonplace when rock acts try their hand at unplugged recording, Ongiara is proof that, when done properly, a huge chasm still separates realacoustic music from rock.  Full text...

Ongiara is named for the vessel the Great Lake Swimmers took to reach their initial recording studio on Toronto Island. But the real gem in this band's acoustics goes deservedly to Aeolian Hall in London, Ontario, where Vieux Farka Touré and dozens of others have performed, and where most of this album was recorded. The effect is, naturally, that of a live performance, which lends some color and depth to an otherwise bland, somnambulant group of songs.  Full text...