Toronto's Great Lake Swimmers are named, of course, for the Great Lakes, which, I learned in fourth grade, separate Midwestern America from southern Canada. Appropriately, on their self-titled debut (which was released in Canada in 2003), the band sound like they have one foot in both countries: they-- or rather, on this record, head Swimmer Tony Dekker-- play a brand of ambient folk that's strikingly similar to that of Floridian Iron & Wine, but they add enough local color to make it sound more specifically local. Dekker even fashions the refrain of "I Will Never See the Sun" from points on a map-- "I will never see the sun/ Spadina, St. George, Bay, and Yonge."
That's one of only a few songs on the album featuring a full band; most focus squarely on Dekker's closely miked voice and guitar. Great Lake Swimmers proudly-- occasionally too proudly-- bears the marks of its creation. It was recorded in an abandoned silo in rural Ontario, so the structure adds an echoey cry to Dekker's vocals (which sound more like Jim James than Sam Beam) and the setting infuses the songs with a constant feedback of insect noise. The few other instruments are more suggestions than sounds: A fluid bass flows beneath the songs like an underground spring, an organ tiptoes through a few tracks as if trying not to wake the sleeping.
This naturalistic aesthetic suits Dekker's sadsack songs, which are stark and atmospheric, yet lyrically generous. To gauge the album's moodiness, consider this line from "The Man With No Skin": "The world let me down...in a big way." Even as his voice trails wistfully off on that last phrase, Dekker's not whining or even complaining: disappointment is a mere fact of life for him, not a personal injustice. And while he does admit on "Moving, Shaking" that "It's hard to see all the little things when the big things get in the way," he is never too confessional that he can't see the world around him, like the "an ant crawling across a broken tile."
Dekker can be a startlingly literal songwriter at times. On "The Man With No Skin," he describes that epidermal lack in such detail that it barely qualifies as allegorical: "Nobody wants to see a beating heart or lung or a brain." And as the album progresses, the Swimmers portion of band name becomes a central theme, as the final two tracks, "Three Days at Sea (Three Lost Years)" and "Great Lake Swimmers", describe the dangers of water in language that makes drowning seem as much a blessing as a doom. It's a fitting metaphor for life's breakers and gales, but Dekker's voice sounds haggard and tired as he hits the high notes at the end of each line. That fatigue makes both the song and the album sound all the more mortally dire, especially when Dekker sings, "It's such a long swim."
