![]() ![]() Things open on familiar territory with the dramatic slowburner “Omega Dog”. The Dears of 2011 largely abandon the ambient segueways and meandering outros that bogged down their previous album and stick to a slightly more conventional verse/chorus/spazz-out structure. Only, in this snowbound neighborhood, the disaffected youth have grown into god-fearing adults who party in their basements while they wait for the coming apocalypse. Although there are no easy throughlines or unifying themes (unless recurring harpsichord solos count), Degeneration Street plays like a distant cousin to Arcade Fire’s similarly overlong The Suburbs. Keen to bottle the excitement of their resurrection, the band cruises with the needle pegged, making for an occasionally overwhelming listening experience. ![]() Cobbling together a greatest hits lineup of assorted players from the band’s 15-year history (none more valuable than versatile guitarist Patrick Krief), the new-look Dears spit fire and brimstone all over Lightburn’s strongest batch of songs to date. Not only have the Dears been reborn creatively they’ve become an actual band again. On Degeneration Street, the band’s miraculous new album, Lightburn makes it all kinds of right. After all, the mantra that is repeated through the album’s 11-minute closer is “I’ll make it right…next time”. ![]() Missiles certainly sounded like it was created with the inevitable death of the band in mind, yet there were hints throughout that Lightburn was just trying to shake off some bad juju. Pared down to the married duo of Murray Lightburn and Natalia Yanchak, the band released the insular, grumpy Missiles toward the end of 2008 and set out on a tour that looked like a fairly joyless experience, judging by a band-shot tour documentary. ![]() Instead, the band disintegrated in cloud of internal conflict and ever-diminishing returns. When they dropped the highly acclaimed No Cities Left back in 2003, there was little reason to think they wouldn’t soon be playing the same arenas as Arcade Fire, their neighbors and fellow architects of grandiose pop. It hasn’t been a particularly easy half-decade for Montreal collective the Dears. ![]()
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