The Dears
Gang Of Losers

THE REVIEW

How come Mr. Composer Murray A. Lightburn no longer sings like Damon Albarn?

How come the new album by the Dears doesn't sound so wonderfully Pulp (the Pulp of "This Is Hardcore"), so British?

How come those orchestral arrangements of "No Cities Left", so clean and sumptuous together, have disappeared?

Simple: the Dears have changed path, and there’s nothing wrong if, like Mr. Composer Murray A. Lightburn, they know how to write beautiful songs. Indeed, it's all for the best.

Now the Dears sound American, or rather (since they come from Montreal and it’s been in vogue lately), they sound Canadian. After a fairly pointless instrumental opening, the album starts with the riff of the first single ("Ticket To Immortality"), which is not exciting. It is followed by a decided increase in roughness with "Death Or Life We Want You", a track that, apart from some very Pulp harmonic passages halfway through, sounds hard and gritty. "Hate Then Love" is the best thing on the album: Lightburn ends up singing almost like Stipe and his dear ones sound very R.E.M., crafting a great track (a similar goes for "Bandwagoneers", also characterized by a nice ending).

By the fifth song, you realize the old Dears are gone: no more acoustic guitars, noir atmospheres and neoromantic mood, but backdrops of blurred keyboards over which sounds markedly dirtier than before unfold, with Lightburn's same voice coming out surprisingly changed, less deep and abyssal, and more scattered. But it's a deliberate effect: this is the album of the losers, after all. And when Lightburn takes a swipe at the white folk ("White Only Party": great title) he becomes British again, between Blur and Smiths, and achieves high levels once more. There are some slips, a few tracks that drift away a bit dully, but the intensity remains high (listen to "Fear Made The World Go 'Round" and "Ballad Of Humankindness"), and the album comes out cohesive and homogeneous (I’d say bordering on "concept").

I would say that the new Dears guise does not disappoint, even if (it must be said) the ensemble of "No Cities Left" was a good notch above.