The North Lakes set to perform in Moncton

With a sweet, rockin’ debut record under its wings, Charlottetown rock band The North Lakes is set to bring its music to Moncton’s Paramount Lounge next Wednesday night. Influenced by the likes of Tom Petty and Elvis Costello, the members that make up The North Lakes are certainly not novices, having played and continuing to play with other music acts including Milks and Rectangles, Raccoon Bandit and Al Tuck.

Though The North Lakes boasts six full-time members, band vocalist and guitarist Nathan Gill says that due to the varied schedules of the band mates, they can sometimes find themselves performing as a quartet.

“If we perform a show as a four-piece band, we find it still works well in terms of sounding how we want it to sound live,” Gill says. “For those shows, we just have to work a little harder to replicate the fuller sound of the six-piece band.”

To help capture the band at their best for their debut record, the group hired Halifax producer Charles Austin to oversee the proceedings. Austin, a former member of Halifax power pop band The Superfriendz, has also overseen albums by Rawlins Cross and Thom Swift and receives nothing but praise from Gill.

“The experience of having worked with Charles was nothing short of amazing,” he gushes.

Asked what Austin was able to contribute to the making of Cobra, Gill notes that they weren’t necessarily seeking assistance to refine their material but were more looking for ideas on how to enhance their songs.

“Charles really knows his stuff and was incredibly fun to hang out with,” Gill says. “We were pretty happy with the songs the way they were when we brought them to him,” Gill says. “But Charles was able to contribute cool thoughts on how to record, specifically around some vocal techniques that we ended up using.

“We ended up being on common musical ground through the whole process though. If we identified a song as sounding like the Gun Club for instance, Charles was tuned in to that and knew exactly what we were talking about.”

In addition to a run of shows through the Maritimes in February, including a date in Moncton on Wednesday, Feb. 10, The North Lakes will be heading west of New Brunswick for the first time, playing shows in Ottawa, London and Toronto next month. Once the Ontario dates wrap up, Gill says the group is considering releasing an EP of new material later in the year.

“The musical landscape is changing so quickly, I find it a little hard to keep on top of everything,” he states. “I just do what I want to do and if people enjoy it, we are successful as far as I am concerned.”

Article published in February 4, 2011 edition of the Times & Transcript