Contenders is the seventh album from Great Lakes and the second album since main man Ben Crum moved to New York. He is joined by his trusty foils Kevin Shea and Suzanne Nienaber as well as Essex Green Legend Chris Ziter and supporting cast. The press release suggests listening on Headphones, but as I don't own a pair anymore, I will have to make do with the speakers.
The A-side opens slowly and deliberately with Eclipse This, which if they are talking about the last album of theirs I reviewed Wild Vision I think they may be onto something, as this is from the start more to my taste with the psychotropic guitar as the base of everything.
Way Beyond The Blue is a more upbeat psych rock song with Ben Crum’s burnished and slightly frayed at the edges vocals take us Way Beyond The Blue almost as much as the restrained yet wild guitar solo.
Easy When You Know How has a sly laconic vocal and even more laconic backing vocals as the guitars wail away and the drums keep everything nicely together.
Baby's Breath sounds almost like an outtake from Steve Wynn's Sweetness And Light album and is very much in that rich vein of psych frazzled power pop, in this case about a new born Baby's Breath, this almost sounds like it could work as a drive time anthem as well, which is no bad thing.
I'm Not Listening takes a marching band style beat and then decorates it with guitar swirls and Ben's more or less spoken word tale of ignoring everything you say to him as he wants to focus on the histrionics of the six strings, rather than your issues, as all he cares about is his music sounding as good as it can.
The B-side opens with Born Frees that almost has a Great Contender edge to it with a bit of a fairground feel to the sound, this has some almost doo wop psychedelia thing going on.
Last Nights Smoke is a bruised and battered song of regret and hard feelings for what may have gone wrong as you've woken up and the place still reeks of whatever you smoked last night as you try to remember why you want to sound like Crazy Horse again.
For Wave Fighter Suzanne Nienaber takes lead vocal on this rather soft and heart felt song that has a bit of a Rickie Lee Jones feel to it.
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Broken Even has a great paisley indie sound to it as the guitar really let's go against the solid as can be drums and tambourine, the world weary vocals and tale of despair at the end of an relationship that he feels lucky to be coming out of having Broken Even.
The album closes with Your Eyes Are X's which if nothing else is a great song title and I hope he means kisses as he sees you looking at him and all he can see is love and lust as this song slowly comes to the boil in the same way he wants to be totally fulfilled by the X's he sees in your eyes.
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