Besnard Lakes Talk Next Album, Losing Polaris and Scoring Mark Ruffalo

The Besnard Lakes just keep roaring along. Their last two albums enjoyed tremendous critical success, including a pair of Polaris Prize nominations, and when not distracted with their film score side-business for directors like Mark Ruffalo, the Montreal-based band have been busy planning their next record.

"We do want to start recording the next record this year in the summer time probably," singer-bassist Olga Goreas tells Spinner. "With the last couple we didn't have the release schedule we wanted in terms of it being three years. I'd like to be able to say that we're going to have another record out next year at this time, and that's kind of what we're hoping and aiming for."

"We're probably going to stick with the cosmos and spies," Goreas adds regarding the band's follow-up to 'The Besnard Lakes Are the Roaring Night.' "There's a wealth of material there that seems to press all the right buttons for us, so we'll probably continue on that tangent. I always write from a more personal, first-person sort of way so we'll see what stories transpire between now and then."

So do the Besnard Lakes hope the next record finally tips the scales in their favour and thrusts them into the Polaris Prize winner's circle alongside Caribou, F---ed Up and Karkwa?

"I think if anything we're passed that pressure," Goreas says. "Now it's just kind of whatever, it's never going to happen. It's fun to do and get invited there. I'm just basically resigned to the fact that we're probably not going to win it. I think it's more meaningful for a band that's on the upswing, not that I wouldn't like to have the paycheque."

Watch the Besnard Lakes' Video for 'Albatross'
It seems the quartet, helmed by Goreas' husband Jace Lasek, have other things to focus their attention on anyways, particularly their burgeoning business scoring films.

The band recently completed the soundtrack for 'Memories Corner' -- which tells the story of a French journalist who travels to Japan to cover memorial ceremonies being held for the 10th anniversary of the Great Hanshin earthquake -- as well as 'Pine Point,' an interactive web piece documenting the story of a former mining town in the Northwest Territories. Their work on Mark Ruffalo's 'Sympathy for Delicious' is perhaps the most high-profile of these scoring projects, though.

"When we first got a call from Mark Ruffalo we didn't really know what to think about it," Goreas says. "We hadn't previously done anything like that, but at the same time it's just kind of knowing intuitively that it would probably be something that would really work for us because we've always been one of those bands where we have a visual narrative that we're always thinking of.

"A lot of the stuff we've done for film scores is not really a lot like us as a band live. It's more stripped down, more atmospheric."

Regardless of the medium, Goreas says the Besnard Lakes make music that is ultimately meant to connect with something deep inside the listener.

"I like to think we're one of those bands that is exciting to see live, but at the same time ... I want it to be a personal thing, I just want everyone to have their own personal experience with it -- that's where we're coming from anyway."