Great Lakes return with ‘Fear of the Fear’, their ninth album and one of Ben Crum’s most personal records to date. The album arrives August 21 via HHBTM Records, and we’re very pleased to share an advance stream below.

Much of ‘Fear of the Fear’ was written and recorded in Memphis, and Crum has described it as his “Memphis Record.” It follows 2025’s ‘Don’t Swim Too Close’, although musically he sees it as something of a companion to 2022’s ‘Contenders’, again mixed by Luis Leal.

The circumstances behind the songs are much heavier. Much of the album deals with the death of Crum’s close friend Ryan Trammel and the grief, anger and confusion that followed. Rather than turning that experience into something tidy or sentimental, Crum writes about the contradictory parts of losing someone: missing them, being angry with them, remembering their faults and wondering whether anything could have been done differently.

He also gave himself a simple rule while writing the album: no bridges. The idea was to make the songs more direct. That approach carries over into the sequencing, which begins with some of the shortest and most immediate songs before gradually becoming longer and emotionally heavier.

Crum is joined by longtime collaborators Kevin Shea and Suzanne Nienaber, alongside David Gould, Petter Folkedal, Leah Keys, Andrew Geraci, Seth Moody, John Whittemore, Kyle Forester and Steve Silverstein.

The cover photograph was taken by Crum in 2001 in Beit Jala in the West Bank, an image he felt connected naturally with the themes running through the record.

“This was inspired by a person who told me: ‘I’m confused about what I’m confused about.’ This song alludes to the text of their favorite book, and is the first of several songs on the record to address subconscious memory.

“When I’m working on music, I often review my progress while taking walks, driving around in the car, etc. I noticed that, for whatever reason, this song, when I’m behind the wheel, makes me want to speed. So, listener, be careful. Don’t get a ticket.”

‘Show Me Tomorrow’
“This one’s partially in my dead friend’s voice, and partially written from my own autobiographical perspective, especially in terms of my experience of grief and loss.

“The line ‘it’s been a real yawn since you’ve been gone’ is about something I didn’t really think about until I’d lost a good friend, the reality that it’s actually pretty boring that they’re gone. It’s painful when you think of something and want to share it but can’t. But it’s also just plain boring being left behind. I’m still processing that boredom, not to mention the anger and exasperation that I feel.

“The idea of asking the cosmos to ‘show me tomorrow’ appeals to me. And ‘great powers rule the sky, they want to rearrange us’ speaks to a feeling that so much is out of our control.”

‘Song for Gerard Love’
“I wrote this song on the sad day I learned that Gerard Love would no longer be playing in Teenage Fanclub. The way he summed it up in the press release, by saying ‘good innings,’ really stuck with me.

“The idea of Love not being in the band anymore rattled me. I have my own feelings about how hard it can be to get along with people you’re in a band with, even if you love them.

“I started off from my imagined sense of how Love may have been feeling, but I ended up writing autobiographically and personally. So it started off being a song for Gerard Love but kind of ended up also being a song for me, too.”

‘Alone’
“This song is another one about my friend Ryan. His life fell apart and he died of drink, loneliness, disillusionment and abandonment. Because his death affected me so deeply, I found myself wondering where the line is between suicide and addiction.

“I like the lyric: ‘you didn’t know you could make your own chances.’ Sometimes we all fail to realize our agency, and it can be tragic.

“Derek Almstead is on bass, Heather McIntosh’s cello appears as a treated sample, and Kyle Forester plays sax. I play the guitars, synth and Mo Tucker-style, Faust-inspired stand-up drums, and Suzanne is singing with me.”

‘The Darkest Blue There Is’
“Elvis is said to have asked that his and Priscilla’s bedroom at Graceland be painted ‘the darkest blue there is.’

“Reading that in ‘Last Train From Memphis’, the phrase called to mind an anxious and depressed state of mind, and one that I am sort of unendingly compelled to write about.

“Ultimately, this is yet another song about my friend who died too soon. John Whittemore’s outrageous fuzz guitar solo on this song is a highlight for me.”

‘Why Did My Love Go Away?’
“This song could go out to pretty much anyone who has ever been left or dumped. It started out being a song specifically about my father-in-law, whose love left him utterly alone.

“The line, ‘things are, sadly, exactly as they seem,’ is the one that, for me, feels heaviest.

“The instrumentation benefits from John Whittemore’s jangly Byrds-influenced guitar parts and Petter Folkedal’s uniquely inspired piano.”

‘Different Air’
“Over the years I’ve written a bunch of songs about wanting to move. I’m not the kind of person that just likes to settle down somewhere and stay there for a long time. The air starts feeling too still and stifling.

“New York City will probably always be the place we feel most at home, but on multiple occasions we’ve felt a strong desire to get out of there. We currently live upstate, in the Hudson Valley. This song was written at a time when we both very much wanted to leave the city.”

‘The Last Time Again’
“The chorus talks about how the subject was always promising how this time would be the last time he’d let something happen.

“I think if we are honest with ourselves, pretty much everybody can relate to swearing not to let something happen again, yet cursing ourselves when we see a pattern repeating itself despite our best efforts to change.”

‘Side Two of Tattoo You’
“This is another song about subconscious memory. And, though I don’t write a lot of them, it’s also a love song for my wife.

“I used the very particular, and very much to our taste, vibe of the second side of that Stones record to describe a certain feeling we get between each other sometimes.”

‘What Survives Translation’
“It’s said all the world’s wisdom and knowledge can’t be contained within just one language. It probably can’t be contained in even a dozen.

“So much meaning is lost or muddled in human interaction. Relationships fall apart because people can’t translate their visceral feelings into words, movements or actions that effectively communicate what they mean.

“This song is about how, too often, the best we can hope for is that the crux of what we intend to communicate gets across.”

‘Fear of the Fear’
“While the other songs on this record that are about my dead friend are much more critical and often express the genuine frustration I felt with him, this song is more of a tribute: ‘you’d seldom hit, but I liked the way you’d miss.’

“Though he ultimately succumbed to fear, depression and anxiety, I loved what he stood for and I admired a lot about how he lived when life was going well for him.

“I hope that someday something as small and insignificant as this song, or even this record, could help his daughter realize that, as infuriating and exasperating as her father was, he was also deeply loved, admired and appreciated by many. Certainly by me.”

‘Letting Go’
“I didn’t know my friend was saying goodbye, giving up and effectively committing suicide. He had so many secrets.

“At the end of his life he was really just letting go of everything, but I didn’t see it or fully realize it. So many times I’ve told myself that I should’ve known.

“Looking back, I wish I’d figured it out in time and done more to get him help. I still miss him every day.”

“‘Fear of the Fear’ is a dark, personal and heartfelt, but also hopefully uplifting, collection of songs. If you’re sitting down to listen to the record, thank you. I hope you get something meaningful from it.”

Great Lakes Instagram / Bandcamp
Happy Happy Birthday To Me Records Official Website / Facebook / Instagram / Twitter / Bandcamp / YouTube