Almost immediately after completing the recording, half of the band quit, leaving only Lightburn and keyboardist/vocalist Natalia Yanchak. The Dears debuted in 2000 with End of a Hollywood Bedtime Story. The intensity of that delivery process might also explain why the outfit has averaged one proper album every two years.

I just happen to be the guy that's delivering it, along with whoever is in the band.' Where the Dears' music comes from is entirely separate from me. 'I hear stuff in my head, I share it with other people and they do their thing. 'It's not entirely of my own creation,' insists the veteran songwriter. But when it comes to the music, Lightburn insists that there is a separation between who he is and what he creates. As a black Canadian man making music that is often lazily categorized as Brit pop, the musician is subject to even greater scrutiny. I was trying to keep up with it coming in.'Ī tortured, poetic and slightly sardonic frontman with debts to both Morrissey and Morrison, Lightburn is often put under the microscope, characterized as controlling, mercurial and difficult. As the music was coming in, I was hearing it, singing it and playing it at the same time, and I couldn't write the words down fast enough. It has this great sound, and I remember picking it up. 'I had this weird mini acoustic guitar that I borrowed. 'I remember I was downstairs in the studio cleaning up, and suddenly I heard this tune.'Īs he continues, Lightburn - frontman and auteur of Montreal-based symphonic-pop ensemble the Dears - speaks with the enthusiasm and bizarre detachment of a channeler, one of those '80s charlatans who claimed to let the voices of ancient sages speak through them. It came in so fast that I barely remember it,' says Murray Lightburn, recounting the origins of the title track from his band's newest album, Missiles.

Tom power murray lightburn