The Dears - Missiles reviews
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| Guardian |
 Having lost three-quarters of their band during the making of this album, Dears mainstays and husband-and-wife team Murray Lightburn and Natalia Yanchak are singing the blues. They've stripped back their epic indie in favour of ethereal rock, and the result is as complex and beautiful as you'd expect from Montreal's grand miserablists. Awash with choral harmonies, classic riffs, brass and strings, the melodies are sweeping and indulgent, the tight rhythms stretched to snapping point. The Dears have never sounded so vulnerable - especially in Lights Off, a Radioheadesque, insomnia-riddled lullaby - nor Lightburn less like a Canadian Damon Albarn. Instead, his voice is raw with unshed tears and unsullied love. Vengeful in the shoegazer-hued Disclaimer, he twists Yanchak's aloof despair into tangible desperation on Crisis 1 & 2 and plays the redemptive sinner against an angelic children's choir on the 11-minute opus, Saviour. The Dears might be low on personnel, but their emotional artillery remains intact....full text |
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| Courant |
Even before you listen, "Missiles" seems like one of those albums that could signal a band's finale. Most of the Montreal-based Dears departed during the recording, and when you finally get to the sprawling soundscapes that dominate the disc (most tracks clock in at more than 5 minutes), you get a clear sense of its difficult birth.
However, while the group -- largely just vocalist Murray Lightburn and keyboardist Natalie Yanchak -- has found a sometimes-challenging middle ground between the orchestral pop flourishes of its early days and the more spare, aggressive sound of 2006's "Gang of Losers," what makes it all work is the same sense of epic feeling that has always made the Dears so dear to fans of postpunk dramatists like Morrissey and Echo and the Bunnymen's Ian McCulloch. The sentiments and chord progressions stay large, even when the arrangements are scaled back (see the wistful, sax-assisted opener, "Disclaimer.")...full text |
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| Allmusic |
| 2006's Gang of Losers found Montreal-based indie rock darlings the Dears stripping back some of the orchestral flourishes that peppered their acclaimed 2004 release No Cities Left, a move that did little to reduce the band's penchant for effective drama. Four years later, founding members Murray Lightburn and Natalia Yanchak decided to go it alone on Missiles, their first for the Dangerbird label. Recorded in a short period of time with numerous session players, Missiles is as rough and disjointed as it is arranged and majestic, balancing the apocalyptic artistry of No Cities Left with the emotional directness of Gang of Losers. That said, every Dears album requires multiple spins, but Missiles may warrant the most. With the average track clocking in at around five to six minutes, it feels exploratory in more ways than one. Beginning with an extended, saxophone-led intro and ending in a 12-minute, midtempo epic, Missiles has more in common with TV on the Radio and OK Computer-era Radiohead -- "Berlin Heart" is a dead ringer [musically] for "No Surprises") -- than it does the Smiths or Echo & the Bunnymen, two groups that have shadowed the band in the past, and while the rewards are there ("Money Babies," "Lights Off," and "Crisis 1&2" are three of the most engaging cuts the pair has ever written), the hooks are few and far between, resulting in the kind of overly personal transitory album that can either lay the seeds for a full-blown masterpiece, or render the garden infertile....full text |
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