Canadian indie rockers The Dears arrive in my hometown on the day of the Lunar New Year, a good sign, or a bad sign, who knows. The band were formed in Montreal, Quebec in 1995, create an orchestral, dark pop sound and released their first, ultra lo-fi album, `End of a Hollywood Bedtime Story`, in 2000. Their live show is described as “the sonic equivalent of seeing the face of god.” There ninth studio album, `Life Is Beautiful, Life Is Beautiful, Life Is Beautiful` was released last November and it was almost, in my opinion life affirming.
Support tonight is Meg Lui a Northern California–born singer-songwriter and as the seventies disco band Odyssey would say is now an almost `Native New Yorker`. As she begins her set she admits that she is pregnant before sharing a gentle thirty odd minutes mellow set comprising songs that should be on an album due at the end of this year. `Don’t you know` and `Roadkill` came early in the set before her latest single `Gone Girl` which was produced by Sufjan Stevens and Keenan O’Meara. There were further numbers that may have been `Zodiac`, a track about putting your picture on the internet `Instant Validation` before closing with `Satisfy Me`. An enjoyable introduction and a well-received set.
Édith Piaf`s `La Vie on Rose` is pumped through the pa as the anticipation of the band`s arrival on stage is elevated. It`s been twenty years since The Dears last played a show in Brum and we find out later that one or two audience members were actually there. The quintet take to the stage and open with a couple of numbers from the latest release with the shimmering expansive `Gotta Get My Head Right` with it`s opening salvo of “Suck it up buttercup, this is just the beginning of what`s to come” and the equally iridescent `Tomorrow and Tomorrow`.
The thumping almost religious `5 Chords` is blasted out before Murray shares the opening line of “It was the best of times; it was the worst of times” from Charles Dickens’ 1859 novel A Tale of Two Cities before playing `The Worst In Us`. He picks up an acoustic guitar and gifts us `Who are You, Defenders of the Universe? ` before blessing us all with a tambourine and sharing `Hate Then Love` and the dreamy `Disclaimer` with vocals shared with Murray`s wife Natalia. `Whites Only Party` has an almost country vibe before Natalia takes the lead vocals on the melodic `Onward and Downward` and the fairly dark `Instant Nightmare!` and what a rich voice she has.
The set closes out with three cuts from the latest release with the anthemic `Doom Pays` which for me has an early seventies Roxy Music `Virginia Plain` feel, retro synthy `Tears of a Nation` and the re-affirming `Life is Beautiful`. The encore which is encouraged by this packed audience opens with a solo offering from Murray with `Ticket to Immortality` which is about his daughter Neptune who happens to be running the merch stall tonight. He talks affectionately and tenderly about how this song kept her from crying when played in the car when she was a baby. He shares proudly that she has her own band Mellonella who he feels are better than his own. The rest of the band return and close up with `The Second Part` and `You and I are a Gang of Losers`
This was a wonderfully immersive and emotionally draining ninety minutes of songs that not only sated your musical soul but maybe set you off on a train of thought. There must be something in the water in North America as I saw fellow Canadians The Besnard Lakes a couple of nights ago and they were just like The Dears in that they are a band to be really seen and experienced to comprehend the exquisite beauty they behold.
A couple of things spring to mind, one the album title of `Life Is Beautiful, Life Is Beautiful, Life Is Beautiful` kind of summed up this night and two, please don`t leave it twenty years before you return to my hometown.
