Murray Lightburn founded The Dears 14 years ago and, since then, the band has become something of a revolving door for a collective of Montreal-based musicians, emerging as a space for Lightburn (the band’s principal songwriter) to explore emotions through music.
The result of this exploration is a musical output that is dark, intense and fairly dense. Since The Dears first recorded output (2000’s End of a Hollywood Bedtime Story), Lightburn has established himself as one of the most significant indie songwriters this decade. He’s earned comparisons to Ian Curtis, Morrissey, Air and the Flaming Lips.
Lightburn’s songs focus mainly on relationships. The Dears’ second album, No Cities Left, was released in 2004. This album chronicles the end of a relationship, documenting the stages in coping ranging from grief to attempts at reconciliation to the narrator’s ultimate acceptance.
2004 also saw a live collection, Thank You Good Night Sold Out. This release bore witness to the band’s powerful live show; a lush orchestral arrangements took center stage and the 22-minute rendition of “Pinned Together, Falling Apart” (originally a six-minute in its first incarnation on No Cities Left) that closes out the record is an epic tour-de-force.
The Dears released their third album, Gang of Losers in 2004, after scoring a record deal with the Bella Union record label following a legendary set at SXSW the same year. Wisely, the band moved away from the fuller orchestra-backed compositions of their earlier recordings, and focused instead on more conventional electric guitar and keyboard risks.
This album explored personal isolation, a slight departure from No Cities Left’s relentless focus on relationships, although Lightburn still wonders why he can’t seem to “live happily ever after” on “Bandwagoneers”, one of the band’s most memorable songs. Overall, the album was more poppy and slightly more upbeat, following more conventional songwriting arrangements. Tracks ranged from two to four minutes, in contrast to the six to eight minute pieces that filled out their second album.
Their most recent release, 2008’s Missiles, drives home that The Dears are a vehicle for Lightburn’s music, however large his cast of backup players may be. The band seemed poised to split in the months before the release of the album, but emerged with their most challenging release to date. Missiles relies on session players, and has a range far more sweeping than their earlier albums. The album begins with a saxophone-led jam and ends in a 12-minute song, their longest yet. In regards to their sound, the band sounds less like the ’80s bands that Lightburn is so often compared to and more like Radiohead.
The Dears are clearly a band in transition. Lightburn’s influences have changed, as has his personal life—he’s married now to Dears keyboardist Natalia Yanchak and has a child. Because his music has always been so intensely personal, The Dears continue to grow and change with Lightburn, who’s making his best music yet.
How the Dears’ lineup and stylistic changes will impact their live show remains to be seen – but judging from their constantly evolving sound, the transition of their live show will be one worth seeing as well.