Pitchfork

Of all the eight sci-fi lullabies that comprise The Besnard Lakes' Are the Dark Horse, "For Agent 13" is arguably the least likely candidate for a single/video: its falsettoed verses seem to float motionless for an eternity before the song attempts a hard-fought climb up space mountain. Kara Blake's video makes a virtue of this struggle, cross-cutting shots of an elderly man carrying a heavy load on his back and soft-focus glimpses of Besnards front-couple Jace Lasek and Olga Goreas standing pensively in a barren apartement. What at first seems like a random juxtaposition is soon given meaningful context: the heavy load being carried is in fact a miniature house, and the Besnards are its occupants. However, as the mood inside becomes more joyous-- a wedding scene, with Montreal's favorite psych-rockers as the house band-- the conditions outside become more despairing, our aged protaganist struggling up a hill as the song begins its own turbulent ascent. After our man stumbles, the two worlds finally intersect, as a single Polaroid of Goreas falls into his hands. Who knows what it all means-- marriage is a burden, getting old is a bitch, or perhaps the miniature house is just a metaphor for trying to carry a mortgage on an indie-rocker's salary-- but like the Besnards' music, it produces a teary emotional resonance using oblique, dreamlike gestures.

[From Are the Dark Horse; out now on Jagjaguwar]