Dear to all
The Dears are the latest Eastern indie pop outfit to score international acclaim
Jen Zoratti



There’s a memorable scene in Almost Famous when William, the young and impressionable rock-scribe-in-training, learns that musicians consider music journalists to be ‘the enemy.’

The Dears frontman Murray Lightburn has a better phrase for them.

“‘Dicks and Dictaphones,’” he laughs, on the phone from Amsterdam. “I was put on a press tour in Europe, so I’ve been talking to dicks and Dictaphones all day for a week.”

Not exactly a roaring start to an interview, but dealing with a whole lot of press is a given when you release an album as close to perfect as Gang of Losers. The disc was released in summer, and the Montreal-based indie darlings have been touring feverishly in support of an album that has dominated college radio airwaves and racked up shimmering reviews all over North America and Europe. Going the way of Arcade Fire’s Funeral, Gang of Losers is securing Montreal’s title as the indie-pop capital of the world.

From professional music journalists working at major publications to snobby bloggers on the web, the press can be a helpful tool in generating and perpetuating some serious album buzz. But not all press is good press — especially on the Internet. When Dears guitarist Patrick Krief sat down with a writer from a British blog and candidly talked about meeting Britrock icon Morrissey, he wasn’t anticipating tabloid articles riddled with misquotes.

“It’s still all over the U.K. press,” Lightburn says. “Patrick did an interview for this blog thing, and it wasn’t even about The Dears, and he mentioned that meeting Morrissey was a bit of a disappointment and whatever.

“It’s turned into a total broken telephone. All of a sudden the dailies and the independent media were picking up this ‘story’ and we’re seeing headlines like ‘Dears slam diva Morrissey.’ It’s really lame, typical tabloid press. Now Australia’s talking about it, and if you visit Morrissey’s fan site I’m sure we’re getting massacred. But I think it’s starting to blow over.”

Natalia Yanchak, Lightburn’s wife and bandmate, says something in the background.

“You don’t think so? Well, I don’t really care anymore,” Lightburn says, returning to our conversation. “The first day it came out I was really depressed, but now I just don’t care.”

Morrissey has long been a catalyst for The Dears. Since the band emerged from its hiding place in Montreal’s underground music scene back in 2000, it’s been hard to pick up a Dears review that hasn’t compared Lightburn’s longing vocals and romantically cynical prose to the eternally doomed Smiths frontman.

“You know, me and Morrissey are nothing alike. At all,” Lightburn says. “Every time I see that, I just think it’s lazy fucking journalism.”

Thankfully, the European press isn’t a reflection of European fans. The band, rounded out by George Donoso III (drums), Valérie Jodoin-Keaton (keyboards) and Martin Pelland (bass), has been playing well-attended gigs in cities such as Paris, Berlin, Amsterdam and Milan.

“It’s been really great,” Lightburn says. “We had a really great night here last night, and a fucking awesome show in Paris the night before. The shows over here are going really good, but we’re excited to get back out on the road in Canada. It’s been a while.”

For a long time Canada was known in the international music community as the country that inflicted Celine Dion on the world, but thanks to bands such as The Dears, Broken Social Scene and The Arcade Fire, Canada has become one of the world’s most exciting exporters of new music. Lightburn says European audiences have been incredibly receptive to the Canadian indie pop thing.

“Something that I noticed, in the people in the crowds, there’s this certain genuineness. It’s a real music-fan thing.”

He pauses, then corrects himself.

“Actually, I don’t want to say ‘fan.’ I hate using the term fan, by the way, because it’s short for fanatical, and I don’t think that that’s accurate most of the time. Friends, shall we say?

“I don’t want to say that Canadian fans — friends — aren’t special. I’m not saying ‘same shit, different city,’ but in Europe you get to that quiet part of the song and you can hear a pin drop. That’s really fucking cool.”

Still, it wasn’t Gang of Losers that won The Dears its transatlantic appeal. No Cities Left launched the sextet into best-new-band territory in 2004, and this next big thing found itself in the glossy pages of NME, Spin, Rolling Stone and Stuff. A gig at Glastonbury, the U.K.’s most famous and muddiest music fest, followed in 2005, and the band soon became bigger in England than it was at home.

Gang of Losers is a burning, yearning album, both thematically and musically. It’s a classically off-kilter Dears record in the way it juxtaposes heavy themes with wry humour, but the overall mood has been lightened from outings past. Going from hazy and blurry to manic and lively, the band finally shook the Morrissey Britpop factor to plunge head-first into its very own sound. The album is urgent and immediate, and it’s far more indicative of what the band is capable of onstage — and in the austere, super-slick world of indie pop, a little honest grit is refreshing.

There are no enemies here. People absolutely adore this album, and the band shares that sentiment.

“I fucking love it,” Lightburn says. “When we finished it, I listened to it every day, and not just on a masturbatory level but I was actually able to separate myself from the person singing at me from the speakers.

“The songs destroy me,” Lightburn continues. “I love singing them. On No Cities Left I didn’t feel the same way. We’re utterly proud of this record.”