Event

Great Lake Swimmers

A Forest Of Arms is the sixth album from Tony Dekker's Great Lake Swimmers and the follow up to 2012's New Wild Everywhere. With a surging rhythm section, razor sharp violin, and flourishing banjo and guitars, Dekker and band mates have pushed their sound significantly, creating some of their most dynamic songs ever recorded.

Those familiar with the decade-long output of Great Lake Swimmers will recognize the thematic threads of beauty in the natural world, environmental issues and explorations of close personal ties that hold us together. The familiar versus the strange theme is also running through this record, both in the instrumentation and in the songwriting ("Zero In The City", "I Was A Wayward Pastel Bay").

As with past Great Lake Swimmers albums, A Forest Of Arms was recorded in several locations over the span of several months, covering extensive new territory while remaining true to the group's refined sound. One of the unique and unusual locations was Tyendinaga Cavern and Caves in Tyendinaga, Ontario, where a number of the vocal and acoustic guitar tracks, including the main parts for "Don't Leave Me Hanging," "The Great Bear" and "With Every Departure," were recorded amid haunting acoustics, stalactites, and circling bats.