Discussing The Dear’s new album, ‘Gang Of Losers’ in terms of its departure from the lofty and orchestral cinematic sweeps of its immediate predecessor, ‘No Cities Lost’ is a bit like discussing the discrepancies between a galaxy 250-300 thousand light years away and one some 500 thousand light years away. Relative to the celestial equator they’re both still fucking huge bastards, partially eclipsed by stars and with the beryllium content of a thousand supernovas. Yes, they’ve ditched many of the strings, the three-piece horn sections and The Brebeuf Brass that overwhelmed the debut, but fair’s fair, the heaving, leaden sweep of the magical ‘Ticket To Immortality’ is hardly plug in and play rock or man with his trousers around his ankles. Nor is it the kind of stodgy, pulse-feeling trudge through devastating melancholy that some critics have described it as. It’s earnest yes, but it’s positive. ‘We Will Find Our Place In The World If It Takes all Day and All Night’ whispers warm, croony bandleader Murray Lightburn on ‘Hate Then Love’ against a stormcloud of thrashing cymbals and tortured strings. It has all the quiet exhaustion of Blur’s ‘No Distance Left to Run’ and all the thrilling pomp of ‘Everything Must Go’.
Bearing in mind that the is sprawling Montreal six-piece first put out an a collection of EPs under the banner, ‘Orchestral Pop Noir Romantique’, ‘Gang Of Losers’ is contrast a modest affair, full of lump in the throat moments of true tenderness (‘There Goes My Outfit’, Fear Made The World Go Round’, ‘You And I Are A Gang Of Losers’), chirpy, political irony (‘Whites Only Party’, ‘Ballad Of Humankindness’) and gently twisted noir (‘Find Our Way To Freedom’).
Still complicated, still ambitious and still sounding like an ever so slightly anachronistic conflation of Morrissey and Blur, yet all the more lovely because of it.