Lanterns on the Lake are a critically applauded Newcastle-upon-Tyne-based indie rock quintet, currently comprised of founding trio Hazel Wilde (vocals, guitar, piano), Paul Gregory (guitar, production) and Oliver Ketteringham (drums, piano) with newest members Bob Allen (bass) and Angela Chan (violin, cello, viola).  Founded back in 2007, the band self-released two EPs and a single, which caught the attention of Bella Union Records, who signed the band in late 2010.

Shortly after signing to Bella Union, the band contributed a track to the label’s Christmas 10″ EP compilation, which featured tracks from Peter Broderick and Radiohead‘s Phillip Selway. Building upon the growing buzz surrounding, the band’s self-produced and self-recorded full-length debut effort, Gracious Tide, Take Me Home was released to critical applause in 2011.  During that period, the band opened for Explosions in the Sky, Low, and Yann Tiersen.

The band’s sophomore album 2013’s Until the Colours Run was released to critical praise, with most reviewers making special note of the material’s sociopolitical thematic concerns and undertones. The band then supported their sophomore effort with extensive touring across the European Union and their first Stateside tour that went on through the following year. 

Interestingly, the Newcastle-based act’s third album, 2015’s Beings continued a run of critically applauded albums with Drowned in Sound calling the band “one of Britain’s most crucial bands of the present moment” and DIY Magazine describing them as “virtually without equal.” Lanterns on the Lake supported the album with extensive tours across the European Union and the UK, playing their largest hometown show to date, at Sage Gateshead, where they were accompanied by Royal Northern Sinfonia, performing orchestral arrangements by Fiona Brice.  The show was recorded and released as a 2017 live album, Live with Royal Northern Sinfonia.

Adding to a growing profile nationally and internationally the band has played sets across the international festival circuit, including End of the Road Festival, Glastonbury Festival, SXSW and Bestival.

The band’s highly-anticipated fourth album, Spook the Herd is slated for a February 21, 2020 release through Bella Union. Deriving its title from a pointed comment at the manipulative tactics of ideologies, the album thematically is inspired by and draws from our turbulent and uncertain times in which we’re on the brink of our own annihilation — with the album’s nine songs touching upon our time’s hopelessly polarized politics, social media, addiction, grief, the climate crisis and more.

Spook the Herd marks the first time that the band left their native Newcastle to record in a studio — Yorkshire‘s Distant City Studios, where the album was engineered by Joss Worthington. Doing such a thing shook up the comfortable mindsets they’ve developed during their relatively young careers. “We are a pretty insular band in how we work, and trusting other people enough to allow them to get  involved is not always easy for us,” the band’s Hazel Wilde admits in press notes.

Recorded live as much as possible, the band’s sound still draws from dream pop and post rock — but with a stripped down approach, which gives the material a stark urgency and immediacy. And it reportedly may be the most intimate feeling album of their growing catalog with the material feeling as though you were in the room with the band. Last month, I wrote about Spook the Herd’s second single “Baddies,” a track that found the acclaimed British act balancing a widescreen cinematic bombast with a balladeer’s intimacy with the track centered around soaring strings, dramatic and forceful drumming, shimmering guitar lines and Wilde’s gorgeous and expressive vocals. The end result is a song that sonically recalls Portishead-like trip hop, Beach House-like dream pop and post rock with a narrator making a desperate, last stand against hatred and polarization. 

The album’s third and latest single is the incredibly cinematic “When It All Comes True.” Centered around a soaring hook, Wilde’s gorgeous and expressive vocals, shimmering strings, twinkling keys, forceful drumming, “When It All Comes True” — to my ears, at least — brings Tales of Us-era Goldfrapp to mind, but with a darker, more uncertain undertone. 

“Sometimes when you write a song you are creating a world in the same way a film maker or an artist painting a scene would,” Lantern on the Lake’s Hazel Wilde explains in press notes. “This is a twisted coming-of-age love story where we’re let in on the thoughts of what seems like a deranged narrator with a premonition. They’ve been trying to warn everyone around them of what is to come but nobody takes them seriously. At the time I was writing this one there was a lot of awful stuff on the news about shootings in America and elsewhere and some of that seeped into the story. At the end our narrator promises: ‘through the empty streets in the searing heat I’ll keep my word for you, when the sirens cease and my pulse is weak, I’ll keep my word for you.’”

The recently released video features live footage of the acclaimed British act performing the song for The Spook Sessions at Newcastle’s Blast Studios, which was directed, edited and filmed by Ian West.