The Ebb and Flow of LAKE

LAKE’s music has been a part of my life since before I knew my times tables. I grew up a loyal Cartoon Network devotee; and my dad and I would tune in each week for new episodes of Chowder, Regular Show, Steven Universe and, my undisputed favorite, Adventure Time. I adored the antics of Finn and Jake, the mystery and lore dispersed throughout the Land of Ooo, and the brilliant, subtle and mature tie-ins that the show writers incorporated. I grew up alongside Finn as he learned about the world (he’s one of very few cartoon protagonists who actually ages) and what it means to be a hero who’s truly pure of heart. Like many kids’ TV shows, the music of Adventure Time played an integral role in making that message digestible and, while I didn’t know it at the time, it was LAKE teaching me those lessons.

It took over a decade before I formally “discovered” LAKE. I was rewatching an early episode in which Finn’s friend—and a sentient video game console—BMO shared their favorite song, when I was flooded by an overwhelming sense of déjà vu. Suddenly, I was back in my childhood home, tucked into bed as my parents snored over the blaring and flashing of the TV. The song brought me a deep comfort and familiarity, which made even more sense when I learned that it’s what BMO listens to whenever they’re scared. As soon as I found the song, “No Wonder I” by LAKE, the dots finally connected. This was the same band that sang the Adventure Time outro, “Come Along With Me,” the same band that snapped Finn out of his depression in the episode “The Music Hole.” LAKE’s music was the heartbeat of Adventure Time, and I was finally old enough to understand the impact that had on my younger self. However, just as LAKE is at the center of Adventure Time, Ashley Eriksson and Eli Moore are at the center of LAKE, and their contributions to the show highlight only a fraction of the duo’s 20-year history together.

The origin of the LAKE and Adventure Time collaboration actually predates the band entirely. In the mid-2000s, Eriksson was living near the California Institute of the Arts, providing music to a variety of student films and local passion projects. She soon became friends with Pendleton Ward, a student at CalArts at the same time, who contacted her about using a song for his latest short film, in which a princess gets saved from an evil ice wizard. Eriksson sent over a folder of solo home recordings, and the rest was history. Ward’s film eventually evolved into the pilot of Adventure Time, with Eriksson’s wistful, light-hearted voice setting the tone for the show during its first few seasons. It was an era-defining moment for a generation raised on the nonsensical wisdom of Finn and Jake.

Erikkson’s, and later LAKE’s, dreamy, off-kilter sincerity made them a natural fit—seamlessly blending with Adventure Time’s tenor for whimsy and existential musings, but Eriksson admits that the shared spirit is mostly coincidental. She says, “I think it’s separate because we were doing our thing and Adventure Time was doing its thing, but we’re very lucky to have gotten to be a part of such an amazing show. If we share ethos, then that’s great too.”

LAKE’s inclusions on Adventure Time remain some of their most popular songs, but after years of live performance reshaped the core arrangements, both Eriksson and Moore feel that it’s important to chronicle the natural transformation of their sound. “The songs that I sing in Adventure Time are ‘No Wonder I’ and ‘Come Along With Me,’ and those are popular songs for us, so we play them live, but when we play songs live, they change,” Eriksson says. “If we’ve changed it in a way that’s interesting, then we might want to record it, so that happened with ‘No Wonder I.’ We were playing it a different way and having fun, so we wanted to document that.”

This February, 12 years after its initial appearance on their album Circular Doorway, LAKE released a sprawling new version of BMO’s go-to track. Gone is the minimalist folk atmosphere of the original, replaced by ripples of electric guitar and a driving, uptempo drum groove instead. Eriksson jaunts through each verse as if in a daydream, each line decorating the sweet, polished production around her. Her voice is like a breezy summer day or a hike through the woods—or just the backdrop to an afternoon of cloud-watching in the park. 2025’s “No Wonder I” is grand in scope and refined in execution—a perfect introduction to this new era for LAKE.

For Moore, the decision to record the new version came in 2022 after a stirring conversation with Gary Daly, the lead singer of English new wave group China Crisis. LAKE was opening for China Crisis in Seattle when Daly questioned why Moore and the band neglected to play many of their biggest songs. After all, China Crisis strictly played their hits—no B-sides or unreleased tracks whatsoever. Meanwhile, LAKE was firmly entrenched in promotion for their 2020 record Roundelay, exclusively performing new material. Moore realized that there were fans that came to the show only knowing LAKE’s top songs, and he felt selfish for depriving them of the tracks they most likely came to hear. “In order to be generous, but also to satisfy ourselves, we began trying to come up with a new version of the song,” Moore says. “Andrew [Dorsett] played that drum beat. It clicked really fast. We were on a little northwest tour, and at the end of the tour we recorded the song in the studio. It’s the last song we recorded for the album… It’s like the previous version was a demo and this is another take on the song.”

Even wading ankle deep into LAKE’s extensive discography clarifies why the band has been reluctant to revisit older material. Their 2005 self-titled debut Lake is a delicate collection of folk balladry and eerie found sounds, as if someone left a microphone on by a quiet campsite. While a defining first step, it barely reflects the band that LAKE has grown into. Fast forward to their latest release, Roundelay, and LAKE’s music has transformed into a bold fusion of avant-garde electronic experiments and true indie rock singalongs. Between these albums are seven more full-length projects, each exploring a new sonic direction and drawing from distinctly different wells of influence. LAKE is never content to linger in one place for long—not even for nostalgic retread.

Despite a 10-album catalog, millions of streams and listeners all over the world (seriously, they’ve toured all over Europe, Japan and elsewhere), LAKE remain an underground band. “If there’s 30 people at a show—that’s good for us! A lot of people know our music, but it’s spread very thin,” Eriksson says. Both she and Moore work jobs outside of music, so touring cheaply is a must—yet mainstream success was never their goal. They emphasize their live experience above all else, with Moore arguing that even if a tour results in monetary loss, a good live performance (or even a mediocre one, he jokes) strengthens the artist-to-audience relationship in a way that streaming numbers can never replicate. LAKE took a major hiatus from touring in 2016, but with the release of Bucolic Gone this week, the band is readying themselves for their largest run of shows in almost a decade. “You start to feel very alone,” Moore admits. “Going out and seeing the people is very wholesome.”

Of course, being on the road brings a set of challenges all its own. LAKE recount that during their first European tour, they arrived in France only to find a pile of rubble in place of the DIY venue they were promised a show at. The city had torn down the squat locale just before they arrived, and they had completely missed the memo. Like any battle-tested band, they adapted and found a new, last-minute stage to play, laughing it off as another piece of LAKE lore—just one of many stories from a band that has been everywhere, done everything and yet somehow still exists as a hidden indie gem.

LAKE’s new album, Bucolic Gone, is a testament to these tales—an accumulation of 20 years’ worth of trials and musical tribulations set to tape. Yet, the album is as much a new beginning as it is a season finalé. It’s the band’s tenth full-length project, but it’s their first release with Don Giovanni Records. Additionally, this is their first album as an established trio (Eriksson on bass, Moore on guitar and Dorsett on the kit), yet their new take on “No Wonder I” is a reprisal of a song from LAKE’s early years as an eight-piece ensemble. Bucolic Gone is an ouroboros, a revolving door, both a mirror and a fortune teller for who LAKE were and will be.

The album’s second single, “Wonderful Sunlight,” continues this coalescence of past and present. The idea first took shape during the pandemic, when Moore stumbled upon a set of lyrics months after jotting them down. He put new melody to the words, taught it to the band and brought in collaborators for overdubs in what he described as “music magic.” The resulting track is something both old and new—a soothing meditation that begs to be felt as much as it is heard. Moore sings on the opening verse, “Am I a servant of dreaming children? / Will that service serve me well? / Am I a governor of animals and caverns? / Whose eyes glow throughout the darkness?” Maybe it’s because LAKE and Adventure Time are eternally synapsed together in my mind, but these lines seem purely coded for the show, like Moore knows LAKE is uniquely suited for surreal, ethereal and childlike lullabies.

Recording for Bucolic Gone took place at Anacortes Unknown Recording Studio in Anacortes, Washington, but the band’s creative process was halted in the early stages of production due to Moore developing tinnitus, derailing his ability to make or listen to music in any capacity. Detailing his path towards musical reclamation, he explains that the album was ultimately his salvation, and that it “cured him.” “It was a matter of building up a tolerance again and realizing that I could enjoy it, because I wasn’t even enjoying music for a long time, just going through the motions,” he continues. “It helped to realize that I could forget my troubles and get back into the music here and there, and eventually that was my path towards recovery.” In the three years it took Moore to fully heal, the band chose pieces that they could get through without hurting him, lending a softer, calmer atmosphere to each chapter of the album.

Eriksson and Moore attest that there is no one central theme to Bucolic Gone, but rather when they sent the record to friends for early listens, one response struck a chord: “Someone said it was about the ‘inner child,’” Eriksson remembers, “Looking back at it through that lens, we see it in a lot of the songs, but it wasn’t intentional.” Moore expands on his partner’s thoughts, saying, “There’s a lot of playfulness but also a lot of dealing with aging, looking back, coming to terms with inevitable loss or death, or things not getting better in some ways, and that’s what Bucolic Gone means. Bucolic is the perfect life. It’s a little dismal at times, but there are also lots of funny moments, even if it’s not a lot.”

Bucolic Gone also celebrates two decades for LAKE as a band—no small feat for any relationship, let alone a creative one, and especially in indie music. Considering 20 years has been the entire span of my life, I have nothing but praise for Eriksson and Moore, who have continued creating at such a high level all this time. “We’re so proud,” Eriksson says. “We have this discussion about how this is our life’s work. We’ve put a lot of time into this, so over time, we have more gratitude for having been able to do this and having a body of work.” Moore continues, “We are lucky we work really well together. We’re efficient with each other and with our ideas, and we have two songwriters—and a really good orchestrator and occasional bridge writer, speaking of Andrew—so we can record a song very efficiently, get together, record, and come to a consensus quickly.”

After spending so much time together, there are bound to be struggles. Moore recalls a period where he didn’t like what the band was making, how he contemplated the future of LAKE with worry. But that anxiety has since turned into a brighter optimism. “There was a dark period for me where I didn’t like what we were doing for three records,” he recalls. “I think that these last two albums are my favorite. I felt that way five years ago when Roundelay came out, so I still feel like we’re developing. And, if we had had more success, I don’t know if I would have continued trying to the same degree. In our 40s, it’s astounding that we can impress ourselves and feel like we’re developing.”

With the release of Bucolic Gone and no signs of slowing momentum, LAKE continue to chart their own course, proving that longevity doesn’t have to mean creative stagnation. They’re a band on an adventure all their own—a journey still brimming with stories to tell—and if their past is any indication of their future, the next chapter of LAKE promises to be even more enthralling than the ones that came before.

LAKE will be playing the Paste Party at SXSW on Friday, March 14. RSVP here.

Gavyn Green is one of Paste’s music interns and a music industry major at Drexel University. His work has appeared in publications including Paste and WXPN.