The Dears: Local mainstays react to neo-preppy invasion with their new album

The Dears are remarkably resilient. After a few tumultuous years and the release of 2008’s Missiles – which frontman Murray Lightburn describes as “an experiment that maybe should have stayed in the lab a bit longer” – their fifth album, Degeneration Street, is both a return to form and a change of pace. The trademark style of romantic pop these Montreal-based music veterans are known for gets an upgrade with its new synthy, cinematic-rock sound. Murray attributes this fresh approach to a rare instance of the band reacting to the music scene outside their own sonic microcosm.

“We’ve been bombarded with neo-preppy music,” Lightburn said. “The Dears have always existed in another place than what’s currently going on, and that sometimes makes us fashionable or not fashionable, depending on where music is. Right now, it’s kind of like a beard-o, preppy, wedgie vibe. It’s been done.”

Even with the fresh stylistic approach, Degeneration Street is still definitively a Dears album. The title follows their tradition of giving something normally pejorative a positive-yet-ironic spin; and, being a lyricist with a lot to say, Murray doesn’t stray from his penchant for portraying his social environment with what he describes as a “brutal mirror.”

“The subject is degeneration in different forms: in the physical form, the spiritual form, in society,” he explained. “It’s kind of a ‘greatest hits of The Dears’ with all new songs, because we cull from our own thing. It’s a more refined Dears; it’s our most confident, assertive, to-the-point statement.”

Reinventing the Wheel
Along with their revamped sound, The Dears are taking a shot at revamping the album cycle. The band played their new album in full during various residencies in Mexico City and Montreal, among others, long before the album’s release. By presenting the new material this way, Murray hopes to challenge the pervasive instant-gratification aspect of the music industry which, from his perspective, takes away from the consumer’s capacity to put down the iPhone and appreciate the music.

“Technology has been great for the delivery of art and the making of it, but I find for the consumption, it’s been terrible. People are constantly on their fuckin’ face-fuck or tweeting,” Lightburn quipped. “An experiment that I’ve been wanting to do for years – and that I think is the salvation of the music industry – is less of that stuff, and more presentation of the new works live in front of an audience.”

It is certainly an ambitious project, but The Dears might be the right ones to take it on: they’ve been present on the scene for over a decade and, despite having a few of what Murray calls “internal meltdowns,” they don’t plan on calling it quits any time soon.

“I have accepted, only just a few years ago, that this is my life, and this is my life’s work. I’ll just do this until I’m dead. What else am I gonna do? I’m like the lighthouse keeper; somebody’s gotta do it.”