Lakesigns is a rock band formed in 2009 in Chicago. They have released two EPs and one full-length album titled Imboden Hoxie. The band’s songs originate as ditties and soft folk songs from their two singer-songwriters. Though their vocal deliveries are disparate, ranging from the start and stop unhinged enunciations of David Byrne to a more subdued low melancholic style, the dual singers switch off on stage and on record, like many bands before them, beginning perhaps with the Beatles and continuing into the present with Grizzly Bear. These initial inklings of Lakesigns songs then get thrown into an open process of revision and discovery as all band members tweak and revise the songs, add new sections, arrange parts, and complicate simple chord cycles. Songs composed on acoustic guitar or ukulele get the “Lakesigns” treatment. Bass lines rooted in the style of jam originators the Grateful Dead lend an articulate looseness and groove to the songs while complex drumming harkening back to Keith Moon elevates the energy and rhythmic diversity. Lakesigns’ long, complicated song structures also leave room for improvisation, most vividly in the saxophone that colors all its material and supports this rock band in a way unlike any other use of sax. Finally electric guitar—tending towards distortion, reverb, and echo tones—rides darkly underneath, or rises up clean and bright, always providing centrally important parts, but remaining enigmatic, shifting to suit the song at hand. This process of songwriting is central to Lakesigns as a band because it is a process that never stops. Their songs constantly shift and grow with the tastes and talents of the band members. Each EP release followed by their full-length Imboden Hoxie has shown this development, as songs get refined and reimagined. Audiences at their live shows, too, find a slightly different Lakesigns at each gig, as new songs are added and old ones are continually transformed. Lakesigns is playing Chicago throughout this fall in support of Imboden Hoxie. They’ve started writing and working on their next release, scheduled for a summer 2012 release.
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