If Montreal’s own soul indie rock band The Dears have taught us anything in their 30th year of existence, it is to fight for love; you have to fight against whatever threatens it, even yourself. For those who have followed The Dears this far into their career, this will be seen as sheer growth. On their first project, 2000’s End of a Hollywood Bedtime Story, frontman and guitarist Murray Lightburn wanted to try and convince everyone that “There Is No Such Thing As Love.” Next thing you know, he volunteers to “avenge the death of all romance” on 2003’s No Cities Left’s “22.” He even introduced a rally cry of “our love, don’t mess with our love” in the middle of the same album’s intrusive single “Lost in the Plot.” But The Dears also know every battle is not without its moment of weakness.
Between 2015 and 2020, The Dears released a trilogy of albums exploring the marriage turbulence between principled songwriters Lightburn and Natalia Yanchak. Times Infinity Volume 1 & Vol. 2 both contain brutally direct songs where Lightburn holds on to a seemingly fractured relationship while Yanchak emotionally resigns on the other end. With Lover’s Rock, they tackle the wreckage on tracks such as the thunderous “Instant Nightmare!” and the reflective “Is This What You Really Want?” before vowing to start over on the final track. But the one way to avoid battling each other is to search for something else to fight together, and on The Dears’ ninth album, Life is Beautiful! Life is Beautiful! Life is Beautiful!—a title both signaling a sense of positivity and a desperation to hold onto such optimism—finds every member involved in a battle threatening to affect everyone and everything in sight.
Word is authoritarianism—a movement rebranded as Trumpism—has already run ragged here in the U.S. of A., and is threatening to spread like a virus throughout multiple countries. Canada is one country HE is thinking of trying to rope into this authoritarian regime, and Life is Beautiful! feels like a response written out of desperation to hold onto some semblance of positivity and power. If this project proves anything, it is that the fight for both a place in the world and love’s place within it hasn’t stopped—it is just now much more defined than before, especially since Lightburn and Yanchak both have children to shape this world for.
What you can count on The Dears for is their need to go big with their music. Songs often swell, explode, or rock with a rhythm and an authentic sheen of emotional euphoria that could seem over-the-top in a lesser band’s hands. Sincerity and candidness are where their superpowers lie. When Lightburn or Yanchak sing of ways to save the world through connection and love, it never feels hokey or preachy. Hell, sometimes, it’s said with a smirk. The prog-pop beginner “Gotta Get My Head Right” is a perfect example of this, starting with a synthpop meditation on all that is going wrong. Even as Murray says, “suck it up, buttercup / It’s just the beginning of what’s to come,” it feels more like a locker room pep talk between coach and athlete. The song ends on an orchestral second half where he asks, “Are you ready now?” And by ready, he means to keep love together and life filled with a semblance of hope among the madness. The kind of love is irrelevant, as all may be under threat.
The Dears are not new to addressing dark times in history. On Gang of Losers, they addressed the Iraq War with “Death or Life We Want You,” and now, “Doom Pays,” the glam-rock fistpumper, is one of the most transparent anthems written about how to respond to our current times. Lightburn directly asks, “Are we up for another beatdown?” and contemplates what a good response to it all might be. “I’ll decide if I should go, or should I stay and hold my ground?” is his next question before coming to a potentially grim conclusion: “I’m well aware that in battle, I could die.” Coincidentally enough, the dark brooder “Tears of a Nation” is the album’s spiritual yin to the yang of “Doom Pays.” Like the latter track, Lightburn acknowledges the “war at our doorstep,” and rather than soldiering on, doubt sets in as he frustratingly bellows, “I don’t think I could stay.” With these two, he perfectly captures both the anxiety of living in dangerous times and the acceptance that you may have to knuckle up if you cannot just run.
Between politically-charged songs of facing such grand worries are rapturous songs where peace can be found in the small things. After all, while The Dears could easily have succumbed to doomerism if they wanted to, it always helps to have something to remind you that optimism and thankfulness has its perks in these dark moments. On the album, Lightburn finds joy and peace in everything from thinking of late family members on “Dead Contacts,” addressing his truest love on “Deep in My Heart,” and in the well-being of his children on “Yesterday and Yesterday.”
Life is Beautiful! Life is Beautiful! Life is Beautiful! is a grandiose album convincing you that if life is truly beautiful, then it is worth maintaining in the face of evil. But such is always best done in numbers, with the passion of a dreamer, and, of course, with as much love as the average human can muster. “When we start to fall apart, the world’s not far behind us,” Lightburn states matter-of-factly on “Babe, We’ll Find a Way.” “But if we remember to stick together, our love is covered in blindness.” See you on the battlefield, soldier.
