The Okay Lakes
Chicago, Illinois, United States
About
The Okay Lakes make cinematic, heart-stirring, lyric-driven songs as grounded as they are ethereal, and as hook-filled as they are haunting. Their songs unspool like short films, foregrounding the cursive melodies and clear-eyed storytelling of Jordan Keller—a Michigan-born singer, songwriter, producer, and multi-instrumentalist. With help from a stable of musicians, Keller layers up dynamic, synesthetic arrangements to deepen the emotional colors of his poignant guitar- and piano-based songs. The band’s sonic backdrops cover a panoramic range of textures and instrumentation, and evoke the feeling of moonsilvered night drives in late-autumn/midwinter: hypnotic drum grooves, felted upright piano, fingerpicked guitar, warm blankets of cello and viola, icy synthesizer, and gleaming chords braided from samples of water singing in wine glasses. Stark and soft, lush and anthemic—sometimes all within the same song—The Okay Lakes’ songs are unified by one consistent, defining element: their captivating and poetic lyrics. Keller lights the keen details and filmic imagery of each verse, carefully illuminating meaningful scenes in which characters restlessly search for truths in the valleys between what their lives are and what they hope (or hoped) those lives might be.
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