It’s a fact that live albums are sometimes a risky business, Orchestral live albums? Overblown and highfalutin, they’re too often the errant result of deliriously daft backstage ideas after a band enjoys their rider a little too much, With thin ideas bloated by commercial success, they’re the foie gras of rock. Think Metallica, ELP, and Yes; indulgent doesn’t begin to cover it. In tight times, amidst a forensic focus on social media “reach”, streaming figures, and brand synergy, what sort of act would think that such a baroque and involved treatment of their songs would be a good idea? Step forward Lanterns On The Lake. One of the UK’s best purveyors of widescreen dream-pop – and for whom widespread success remains bafflingly elusive – their thoughtful, ornate music with last year’s excellent Beings , it was their third album. It also goes hand-in-hand with a low-key, an almost apologetic style.
So just how did a self-effacing indie band end up blinking into the stage lights at The Sage – a large, purpose-built concert hall and music hub in their native Gateshead – flanked by the Royal Northern Sinfonia?.
“The Sage have been really supportive of us as a local band for a long while,” says singer Hazel Wilde. “They put us on in their smaller room in 2011, and we played the main room in 2013 – but I don’t think we were quite ready for that. We’d been convinced to do it, and on the day I felt really unconfident about playing, so I drank a bottle of wine and took some beta blockers to ease the nerves. Suffice to say I felt pretty detached from the whole experience. The people at the venue were keen to hear “Beings” before we’d put it out, so Simon [Raymonde] at Bella Union passed it on to them, then conversations began.”
Like all worthy artistic endeavours, such a new project brought a broad sense of personal challenge, so did that previous bad experience cloud the preparations? “It felt weird at first,” Wilde admits. “I also think that, like a lot of people in bands, we feel like we’re just winging it, like we’re frauds. No-one wants to get caught out – going into that situation makes you feel exposed. We come from such different worlds to the orchestra players: there was us, this shy, obscure indie band coming in to work with such a renowned orchestra.
“I’ve also never felt all that sure of myself in the past. But I think most people have that, whether they like to admit it or not. I think I am extrovert trapped inside an introvert’s body. Or an introvert trapped inside an extrovert’s life. One of those, I’m not sure which.”
Where Wilde does herself and, by extension, the band’s material down – albeit inadvertently via that all-pervading thoughtful mentality again – Is that Lanterns On The Lake’s music is actually perfectly suited to being taken in just such a bold direction. beautifully austere, inventive but direct, and politically and personally charged.
The collaboration found its feet as the band began work on scoring with Fiona Brice, an acclaimed violinist, arranger and composer who has also worked with John Grant, Midlake, and Vashti Bunyan. “She totally got what we were about and was really open to all our ideas. She was keen to explore them and make them happen,” says Wilde. “She really was the bridge between our world and the orchestra’s. We were able to push the songs and add all the nuance and intensity that you imagine when you’re writing – all those textures and colours that are in your head come to the fore.”
The end result is a rare thing – a live orchestral album that makes perfect sense on its own terms. In fact, the evening went so well that it was repeated as another special performance at the Bluedot festival in the summer. Rather than being a exercise in having standard rock motifs with violins lazily plonked on top, this is instead a fluid and natural extension of the band’s work, realising its sense of ambition in scaling up, but also reinterpreting, an established sound.
Lanterns On The Lake tour the UK later this month,
Lanterns On The Lake live with Royal Northern Sinfonia at Sage, Gateshead 2016
