Lakeherst

There are some natural assumptions one can make about a band that chooses to name itself after the destination of the Hindenburg: They’ve
either got a serious dark streak or a solid appreciation for the kind of juicy drama that would make Shakespeare’s toes curl.

For Philadelphia indie rockers LAKEHERST, the answer is C) all of the above. If anything, the name serves as a mnemonic device, a mental
sticky note reading, “The end is near!”

“The image of the Hindenburg coming down in a ball of fire is pretty memorable,” says frontman and Canadian expat Dan Grattan. “It serves
as a good reminder that with one false move everything can go up in flames.”

It’s certainly not the peppiest worldview, but it’s one that has served LAKEHERST well. The band’s moody, gorgeously contemplative
compositions rely on every carefully placed step, every fragile movement that pushes them towards the sort of booksmart rock and roll
transcendence normally associated with such likeminded bands as DEATH CAB FOR CUTIE, JIMMY EAT WORLD, THE CURE, and the
highly influential MINERAL. The songs are simultaneously riling and melancholic, plaintive even, full of rock and roll swagger and tempered by
a shimmering wistfulness – which is what you get when you splice influences from the world of ’60s pop with modern day indie rock icons.
It’s this combination with which the band reaches particularly great heights in the form of their debut album, Euan Aura, a mainstream rock
album for people who don’t listen to mainstream rock. “Euan Aura is actually the name of a town that sounded incredibly cool,” Grattan
explains. “We use it to describe that state that you’re in between dreaming and being awake, kinda like the movie ‘Waking Life.’ It's a
transitional period, a place where the world isn't one thing or another – it’s in between.”

“Waking Life” is a fitting metaphor, considering Euan Aura’s cinematic qualities. LAKEHERST take songs that were written on a microscopic
scale, poured over and painstakingly assembled, and send them into the stratosphere with arena-sized drums and cascading guitar lines – not
to mention some first-rate Canadian rhyming schemes. (“The songwriting gets opened up quite a bit when you can replace ‘about’ with ‘aboot’
and get a lot of new rhyming options out of it, eh?” Grattan quips.)

While their music is informed by a Hindenburg-sized sense of urgency, LAKEHERST channel it into something endearing and universal – a
last-day-of-summer sentimentality that fans have been latching onto, whether it’s at a show or on such tastemaking radio stations as Philly’s
own WXPN. And that phenomenon – the intense connection with listeners – is LAKEHERST’S driving force. If it were up to them, they’d give
it all away for free just to establish that communion on a global scale. Granted, that would seriously hinder the band’s ability to purchase the
staples of survival (Top Ramen and Moscow Mules, of course), but it would be worth it.

There’s a sense of destiny, of inevitability surrounding the band has lingered since its inception, when the members made a commitment to each other and to LAKEHERST despite being scattered in towns all over South Central PA. "Sure, we could've found more local musicians to work with and streamlined the process," explains guitarist Mike Rathfon, "but having the best fit as far as members go superseded any
geographical inconvenience."

Even with the knowledge that disaster could strike at any time, that with one slip-up in life, the whole ship could go down in flames, LAKEHERST continue to push forward. For them, there’s no other choice.

“We can’t imagine doing anything else for the next 50 years,” Grattan adds. "But, we’re not out to change the world – we just want to give
people an aural escape for the duration of 43 minutes 10 seconds."

So let the Hindenburg burn. It’s all just fuel for LAKEHERST’S fire.