Swimmers against the tide of tumult

"Everything is moving so fast," Tony Dekker of Great Lake Swimmers sang, slowly, at Johnny Brenda's on Wednesday night. It was a protest, and in a way, a statement of purpose: GLS's precise, leisurely songs breathe deeply, seeking to counteract the chaos and pace of the modern world. The Toronto quintet often records in rustic settings - abandoned churches, pastoral farms - and favors nocturnal, candlelit atmospheres.

"What does it feel like to fall / In slow motion, despite it all?" Dekker asked, in measured syllables. The question was rhetorical and self-reflexive: The tune played out in slow motion, with soft pastel colors from Erik Arnesen on electric guitar and quiet, sweet, harmony vocals from keyboardist Julie Fader.

The song "Everything Is Moving So Fast," from the band's fourth album, Lost Channels, released last month, gradually grew louder and merged with the title track from 2005's Bodies and Minds. "Sleep won't come till I'm sorry to you," Dekker sang in his fragile tenor. That blurry edge of consciousness is where Great Lake Swimmers dwell.

"Sleep is the only way sometimes to live in a perfect world," he sang later, in "Let's Trade Skins," one of several hushed songs that called to mind both the harmonies of Fleet Foxes and the somber acoustic sound of Iron & Wine. That the 80-minute set, laden with three-quarter-time ballads, was rather sleepy at times was apt, too.

It wasn't monochromatic, though. Arnesen's spooky, metallic banjo-picking brought out the gothic undertones to "Your Rocky Spine," and Dekker's harmonica on "Various Stages" recalled fellow Canadian Neil Young circa Harvest. His solo cover of Neil Diamond's "Song Sung Blue," void of irony, fit right in, too: Great Lake Swimmers relish sadness as much as they do stasis and quietude.

Fellow Canadian Kate Maki opened with a winning set of off-center electric folk songs. Backed most of the time by GLS drummer Greg Millson and piano player Brent Randall, Maki moved from honky-tonk shuffles to toe-tapping train songs to wobbly blues, occasionally interjecting some delectably barbed guitar that played against her girlish voice.