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The Dears are a Montreal band who are currently signed to Bella Union. I have been hearing good things about this band (courtesy of fellow Minion Indoor Miner), and so i tracked down a copy of their first 7" for Bella Union.
The A side, We Can Have It, starts out slowly, almost as folk pop. An organ plays a simple riff, lightly accompanied by an acoustic guitar. The vocalist comes in as a lush male voice singing softly. Eventually, a female voice joins in to sing counter-melody, and the whole thing is rather lovely in a soft and unthreatening way. At this point in the song, i am wanting to compare The Dears to Belle and Sebastien. That would be a dire mistake, as The Dears shortly show me the error of that comparison when the drummer kicks in, joined by some horns, and the guitarists suddenly stomp on their pedals and the whole thing gets louder and messier. The vocalist even kicks it up a notch, bellowing his lines to compete with the keyboard, drum, guitar, and horn volume backing him up. Rather nice really, and somehow ballsier than anything in the Belle and Sebastien catalog.
The B side is completely different. It starts with a nice post-punk throbbing bass riff, then the rest of the band comes in. Here, the drummer plays a martial beat (that somehow reminds me of the drumwork of The Doors) while the vocalist drones his part, singing tonelessly, reciting the words in a flat tone. Meanwhile, the guitars whirl away, getting louder and fuzzy on the chorus. The overall effect of this song is one of tense unease. Of course, the song is called Summer of Protest, so i suppose that this feeling is appropriate. It gets nicely messy at the end, with a siren sample and one of the backing voices singing through a megaphone (for a nice extra bit of distortion). This is an interesting song, and is well done, despite the uneasy tone.
Now, a few things about the actual 7". It's on clear red vinyl, which is rather nice. The design is sleek, and neither too minimal nor too busy. And Bella Union have "45 RPM" plainly stamped on the record. Thank you! Kudos to Bella Union for this. Apparently this is a limited edition single, as mine has "760/1000" written in black ink on the back. That might make it problematic for individuals wanting to track this down. However, with two strong songs, the hunt for this single is definitely worth it.
Overall, this is a nice little single, and i will be on the lookout for more from The Dears.
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