The Dears

The Dears have been together for some time now, but they gained a great deal of attention following their performance at 2004's South By Southwest Festival in Austin, Texas, which culminated in the band appearing on a compilation CD given away with trade paper Music Week.

From muchmusic.com:

"Let's just keep fighting the end of the World. We will hold hands and we will make plans - for life." These last lines sung on No Cities Left are followed by an instrumental marriage of heavenly chorus and symphonic cacophony - symbolic of the journey down a darkened path that finally brought The Dears to promise.

2002 was a year of false starts, broken hope and disappointment. Setting out to begin No Cities Left in April, The Dears thought they had everything they needed to follow up their 2000 debut, End of a Hollywood Bedtime Story: a few of their own dollars, a cheap studio in old Montreal called The Stock Market, an infamous engineer, and plenty of partially demo-ed material. What they did not have was a record label. Seen as an unwanted distraction, The Dears purposely stepped away from the often-engrossing music industry during the making of their new record.

Over the next four months, The Dears recorded some 500 takes per song for each of the twelve tracks on the album. The next step was to edit these takes down to the essential material needed to move forward. But editing took longer than expected, and the band began to feel as though they had undertaken the musical equivalent of Apocalypse Now or Heaven's Gate.

At long last, The Dears flew out to Vancouver for mixing - seven days in November for twelve songs. When they got home, they sat together and listened to their new record: it was completely wrong. There was no way they could put it out. The Dears considered re-recording the entire thing - starting again where they had nine months before - but that would have meant the end of The Dears, having already lost two members earlier that year. Everything seemed utterly hopeless

The Dears called on old friend Howard Bilerman who co-runs a studio up the street in Mile End. The band wanted to see if they could salvage anything from the labour already lost on those tracks. The first night they tried to mix "Twenty Two" - a complicated song with layers of violins, cello, brass, many synthesizers, many vocals - a classic Dears arrangement. While they were not entirely successful, the session sparked a fire at the end of a long dark tunnel; a light that The Dears had not seen for some time. The Dears were squeezed into the already-booked studio in overnight sessions and for eight days straight, from midnight until early afternoon, The Dears mixed their record.

The finishing touches of No Cities Left were made in the dawning hours of New Year's Eve. With this momentous event came an optimism toward the future - that despite all faced in the past, The Dears would triumph and succeed in bringing No Cities Left to the public. With karmic timing, The Dears found and signed off with MapleMusic Recordings in Canada, who furthered this enthusiasm for their music.

Formed in Montreal in 1995, the band's current line-up features Murray A. Lightburn (lead vocals, guitar), Natalia Yanchak (keyboards, backing vocals), George Donoso III (drums), Martin Pelland (bass), Robert Benvie (guitar) and Valerie Jodoin-Keaton (keyboards, flute, backing vocals). The Dears last releases were 2001's Orchestral Pop Noir Romantique and 2002's Protest, both EP's.

The Dears will spend the year touring in support of No Cities Left. If past performances were described as "unstoppable", warning audiences to "expect riots" while anticipating the "sonic equivalent of seeing the face of God," then there is no reason to try and put into words The Dears' live presence. Truly, The Dears must be experienced to be believed.