In-store: The Dears

The Dears

Sonic Boom Records. Thursday, February 17, 2011.

In-stores can serve as a chance to get a revitalizing quick hit from a beloved band, but they can also serve as an appetizer-sized portion for something where you're unsure about how much you enjoy the taste. Case in point: I've never felt too strongly either way about The Dears from Montréal, so I found myself in Sonic Boom's basement mostly to see how things were sounding on what was being praised in some quarters as a "return to form" album. There was a healthy crowd of people who seemed like much stronger enthusiasts than me — no surprise, as this town's love of anthemic Brit bands extends as well to domestic purveyors of the same vibe. Perhaps one reason for my vague antipathy for the band was that they seemed to pitch themselves as a product ripped from the pages of the NME, with inter-band drama and self-proclaimed grandiosity as important as stadium-sized propulsion.

I'm not sure if it was that rockstarness or just run-of-the-mill technical problems that had the band starting an unimpressive half-hour late, but from the outset singer/guitarist Murray Lightburn comported himself as if he were on stage at Wembley Stadium, greeting the crowd with a vigourous shout of "wake up, Toronto!" With a drum machine failing just before starting the first song, Lightburn was ready to plunge in for better or worse, saying, "this could be a total balls... or it could be fucking amazing."

Celebrating their their new Degeneration Street album, the band started off with "Omega Dog", its opening track — and would, in fact proceed to play the next three songs in album order. Going in cold, "Omega Dog" was sorta what I expected — two-and-a-half minutes of song serving as the setup for four minutes of coda, complete with guitar solos and, y'know, general bigness. The return of Patrick Krief to the fold was one of the new album's selling points, and he took his job as prototypical lead guitarist seriously with full-on guitarface and give'r body language. This went over well with the crowd, including the guy beside me who tossed up the devil horns as Krief soloed.

The overall effect was all right — "Blood" worked for me, "Thrones" a bit less so — which might sound less underwhelming if considered with the notion that this sort of emotively-charged arena-ready rock isn't particularly my thing. Still, there's no doubt that Lightburn takes his job as "frontman" seriously, even when playing keytar. There's a very self-conscious "proper rock band" vibe, which I was amused by in a secondhand sort of way, though I couldn't quite delineate how much they were playing the "role", and how much they just felt like they had the bona fides to strut their stuff. For example, Lightburn (who preceded several songs with a shout from Kardinal Offishall's "The Anthem") was occasionally self-depreciating, but it came off as the effort of someone who had read about self-depreciation but who doesn't quite get it. Still, trying to unwrangle personas and personalities is generally a mug's game — most of the time we're merely going to impute whatever meaning to a gesture that would justify our own predispositions.

After those first first four songs from the new album ("c'mon, you all know it's kick-ass," Lightburn informed the crowd) the band closed with "Hate Then Love" from 2006's Gang of Losers. I was entertained, and it was a solid half-hour that probably felt me feeling more well-disposed toward the band, but not to the extent that I reckon I'd be rushing to see them for a ticketed show.

Listen to a song from this set here.