Great Lake Swimmers live at Central United Church in Calgary, May 7 – 2012
by Doug Springer – heavylight.ca

PHOTOS:

The tour supporting the new album has been going great – here’s what people are saying:

Quick Press Quotes

“New Wild Everywhere is a treat of melodic proportions.”
– Paste Magazine

“New Wild Everywhere conveys a new maturity for the GLS, showcasing the assembled talents of the members, and highlights promises of even better things to come in their future.
– Blurt Magazine

“The Canadians’ fifth set tweaks their established formula with splendid results…gorgeous and rewarding…”
– BBC

“It’s as outreaching as we’ve heard yet from GLS, and an indication that the sky is still Dekker’s limit…”
– The Globe & Mail

“New Wild Everywhere’s strengths — catchy melodies and soothing vocals — both calm and entice.”
– Magnet

“The result is a poppy, polished, triumphant record.”
– NOW magazine

“An incredible new album: This is another great notch on the belt of a band that has consistently put forth great music since their first release nearly a decade ago, and they show no signs of slowing down.”
– Northern Transmissions

“Dekker’s new songs remain artfully enigmatic and haunting”
– exclaim!

Articles and Reviews

Concert Review: Scents & Subtle Sounds, Chicago, IL
Great Lake Swimmers @ Lincoln Hall, Chicago, IL 5/1/12
In the roughly six years that I have been seeing Great Lake Swimmers, their fan base and music has grown by leaps and bounds. Last night at Lincoln Hall in Chicago, the Toronto natives kicked off their North American tour with a very impressive show to say the least.
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Interview: City Pages, Minneapolis, MN
Great Lake Swimmers’ Tony Dekker: I’ve swum in every Great Lake
Great Lake Swimmers have built their decade-long musical career around deep, hushed folk-pop that, at times, can be breathtakingly lo-fi…
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Interview: Minnesota Daily
Just keep swimming – Great Lake Swimmers step out of the world and into the studio, but manage to keep things a little wild.
The Ontario folk collective Great Lake Swimmers has been together for nearly a decade. In that time, the band has released five full-length albums, three EPs and seen various lineup changes. But until the recording of the recently released “New Wild Everywhere,” one thing that had eluded them was time in an actual recording studio.
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CD Review: Cloud Times
Great Lake Swimmers have great album.
I have long thought I should own an album by the Great Lake Swimmers. I am, after all, a music junkie and swimmer who lives in a Great Lake state.
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Interview: Uptown, Winnipeg
It’s no grain silo, but…
Toronto’s Great Lake Swimmers traded in its famous field recordings for the studio on its latest album, New Wild Everywhere
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Article: Nelson Star, Nelson, BC, April 27, 2012
Great Lake Swimmers bound for Nelson
Since The Great Lake Swimmers debuted over a decade ago they’ve released four albums, taken home the award for favourite folk/roots artist/group at the Canadian Indie Awards, nominations for a 2009 Polaris Music Prize, a Juno Award for roots and traditional album of the year — group and a Canadian Folk Music Award.
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Article: L.A. Beat, Lethbridge, AB, May 2, 2012
Great Lake Swimmers enjoy experimenting
The Great Lake Swimmers enjoy doing things differently. They recorded their previous four albums in a variety of unorthodox venues, finally making it into a professional studio for their fifth and latest CD “New Wild Everywhere,” and this week, played on a boat on the Seine River in Paris, France.
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CD Review: Vancouver Weekly, Vancouver, BC
Great Lake Swimmers enjoy experimenting
“Think That You Might Be Wrong” is that sweet song that’s playing when you walk into the prom late because you were getting drunk and fooling around with the love of your Life in the park nearby. Turns out it’s the last song of the night, but at least you got to dance.
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CD Review: BBC
The Canadians’ fifth set tweaks their established formula with splendid results.
The best joke on Canadian folk-rockers Great Lake Swimmers’ fifth album is that it sounds absolutely nothing like a New Wild Everywhere. Of course, jokes are fairly hard to come by on a record chocked with sleepy, lilting stomp-alongs like these,
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CD Review: AmericanaUK
Dive in, the water’s lovely
GLS songs have always felt like dust motes hanging in a beam of sunlight; hazy, lazy, warm and hypnotic. Relocating themselves to the studio proper rather than recording in ambient spaces like churches and adding new members (most interestingly Miranda Mullholland on violin and backing vocals) has done little to change the atmosphere or impact of the songs.
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CD Review: The Line of Best Fit, April 19, 2012
Great Lake Swimmers, New Wild Everywhere
For the Great Lake Swimmers, or rather, for the changing collective that supports the quiet and wild pastoral genius of Tony Dekker, this is a difficult fifth album. From the rugged gentleness of Great Lake Swimmers and Bodies and Minds through the slightly poppier feel of Ongiara and the slightly more successful mix of pop and ambient wilderness of Lost Channels it was difficult to know which way their sound would or could go.
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CD Review: Paste Magazine.com, April 3, 2012
Great Lake Swimmers, New Wild Everywhere
Toronto folk artist Tony Dekker and his Great Lake Swimmers made a name for themselves recording songs laden with natural imagery in odd locations.
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CD Review: exclaim.ca, April, 2012
Great Lake Swimmers’ New Normal
On the evening of February 15, the international viewership of American Idol was exposed to a song called “Your Rocky Spine” by Toronto’s Great Lake Swimmers.
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Feature: Globe and Mail, April 10, 2012
Getting wild with the Great Lake Swimmers
It’s called New Wild Everywhere, but the fifth album from the Toronto folk-rockers Great Lake Swimmers is the first one they’ve made at a proper studio (rather than a church or an abandoned grain silo). “Wild,” then, is a relative term – what’s orderly to some is novel and unusual to another. The video of the title track, directed by Adam Makarenko and making its exclusive Canadian debut at globeandmail.com, is set on Toronto Island, as “the sun sinks over the Big Smoke.” The city, wild in its own way, begins to get reclaimed by a wilderness that is commonplace on its bucolic island offshoot.
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CD Review: Now Toronto, April 5, 2012
New Wild Everywhere
Canadian folk-rockers Great Lake Swimmers are known for finding and incorporating creative locations into their recordings. But for their fifth album, they went the traditional route, hunkering down at Revolution Recording studio in Toronto with long-time producer Andy Magoffin.
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Interview: Winnipeg Free Press, April 5, 2012
Alt-folk band plumbs new depths on latest album
Toronto folkies Great Lake Swimmers recently played for a small, intimate crowd in front of the beluga tank at the Vancouver Aquarium. The following afternoon, the band’s main man Tony Dekker and friends were performing in front of stacks of jeans inside a trendy Gastown store for a special Vancouver Sun video session.
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Live Review: Chrome Waves, April 5, 2012
Great Lake Swimmers at Sonic Boom in Toronto
Toronto folkies Great Lake Swimmers recently played for a small, intimate crowd in front of the beluga tank at the Vancouver Aquarium. The following afternoon, the band’s main man Tony Dekker and friends were performing in front of stacks of jeans inside a trendy Gastown store for a special Vancouver Sun video session.
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German Press

CD Review: Music Headquarter, March 30, 2012
Great Lake Swimmers, New Wild Everywhere
Der Titel des neuen Great-Lake-Swimmers-Albums deutet schon an, dass Oberschwimmer Tony Dekker und seine Mitstreiter ein wenig Neuland betreten. So ist “New Wild Everywhere“, laut Dekker, die erste „richtige“ Studioarbeit, die das kanadische Folk-Pop-Kollektiv vorlegt.
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CD Review: Platten Tests, April 10, 2012
Great Lake Swimmers, New Wild Everywhere 7/10
Der erste Song des Albums, er lockert schon mal die Stimmung auf, ohne aufdringlich zu wirken. Mit dem oder der Liebsten unter der Decke kuscheln und sich verliebte Blicke zuwerfen, dazu aus der Ferne ein Chor, leise Streicher, vielleicht ein Piano.
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CD Review: MDR Figaro, April 10, 2012
“New Wild Everywhere” was CD of the week of state radio MDR Figaro, also, the review on their website:
Sie huldigen mit ihrem Namen den Marathonschwimmern, die die Großen Seen Eriesee, Ontariosee und Huronsee durchqueren. Aber die “Great Lake Swimmers” mit Frontmann Tony Dekker aus Toronto sind auch bekannt dafür,
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CD Review: GMX.net, April 5, 2012
Great Lake Swimmers New Wild Everywhere
Achtung, dieses Album wurde in einem Studio aufgenommen! Der Pressetext, die Kritiker und nicht zuletzt die Band selbst geben dem Hörer von “New Wild Everywhere” diesen Umstand ausdrücklich zu bedenken. Gut, die Great Lake Swimmers mochten es zuvor gern unkonventionell und nahmen ihre Musik etwa in einer alten Kirche, einem ehemaligen Getreidesilo oder unter freiem Himmel auf.
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