Pitchfork

Sure, Lost Channels is probably just yet another plainspoken reference to the natural world from Great Lake Swimmers, but let's be mischievous and pretend for a moment that the title of Toronto folkie Tony Dekker's new record was actually inspired by the (totally made up) electro-spectral phenomena that are "lost" television channels.

You have heard of lost television channels, haven't you? They're the ones that exist between the spaces on your TV dial reserved for the "normal" stations. They say that on certain nights, when electromagnetic interference levels are particularly high and all the right planets are aligned, you can use these lost channels to commune with the dead. Seriously!!

Okay fine, so the new Great Lake Swimmers disc is nothing so spooky as all that, though it does have a track called "Palmistry". The follow-up to Dekker's underrated 2007 set Ongiara arrives March 31 on Nettwerk, and the Swimmers will dust off their Speedos and banjos for a few early 2009 shows, with a to-be-announced spring tour to follow. Hey, I hear if you say "Ongiara" into a mirror three times...

Lost Channels:

01 Palmistry
02 Everything Is Moving So Fast
03 Pulling on a Line
04 Concrete Heart
05 She Comes to Me in Dreams
06 The Chorus in the Underground
07 Singer Castle Bells
08 Stealing Tomorrow
09 Still
10 New Light
11 Rivers Edge
12 Unison Falling Into Harmony

GLS tracker:

01-09 Brooklyn, NY - The Bell House *
01-10 New York, NY - Mercury Lounge *#
02-07 Guelph, Ontario - The Sleeman Centre (Hillside Inside)

* with Haley Bonar, Daniel Martin Moore
# with A Hawk and a Hacksaw