The Dears
Electric Ballroom, London / Melkweg, Amsterdam
01/02/2005 - 16/02/2005
It is a long time since I saw a band twice on the same tour but it is always an interesting exercise, particularly if the two dates are more than a few days apart. On Tuesday, 1 February, I went to see The Dears at the Electric Ballroom in London. 15 days later, I was again in attendance at the band’s gig in the Melkweg in Amsterdam. Despite being a fan of their album No Cities Left and enjoying their 45 minute Paradiso performance at London Calling in November, they left me disappointed on both occasions.
I would suspect that the London gig was the largest headlining concert The Dears had ever done outside of Canada and by starting with their 10 minute opus ‘Postcards from Purgatory’, they opened in a highly anti-climactic manner. This led to a number of walk-outs, presumably from people thinking they were seeing the new Smiths or Blur after these lazy comparisons have been thrown around by the music press.
Although band leader Murray Lightburn exclaimed that this gig was a “monumental moment in our lives”, the pacing in a mid-size venue did not suggest that a great deal of thought had been put into a performance which should have been designed to convince an audience, many of whom had presumably heard little of the band.
Some ground was regained with the single 'Lost in the Plot' and the duet with keyboard player Natalia Yanchak, ‘22: The Death of All the Romance’ but this was immediately lost with a half-hearted encore which included a new song, which none of the audience would have heard before. I left disappointed but feeling that the Melkweg gig two weeks later would be better.
Nothing could have been further from the truth. The performance in a packed Melkweg was firstly ruined by the fact that the sound was so loud that it was difficult to make out any melodies in the songs. This also led to walk-outs from a small number of the audience who simply couldn’t handle the level of noise. The set itself was almost the same as in London with some subtle changes which kept the group on stage for about 20 minutes longer.
For a band whose music has a theatrical side it is surprising that they do not use more of this in their performance. Other than Lightburn, the rest of the band is fairly static and a song like ‘22: The Death of All the Romance’ demands that the two singers be centre stage and not have one stuck behind a keyboard. To compound this, the sensuous second keyboardist, Valerie Jodoin-Keaton is sidelined to the far right of the podium where she is as far from centre stage as possible.
The sleeve notes for No Cities Left include the line “Written and Directed by Murray A. Lightburn”. The Melkweg performance in particular confirmed that in Lightburn’s eyes the rest of the band is expendable as his arrogant swagger left the audience in no doubt that the band is effectively him. Towards the end, he even introduced all the back room staff such as the “person who does our sound” and the “bus driver” but at no point did he introduce the rest of his band, all of whom are highly accomplished musicians, and surely as important in a live performance as himself.
The final ignominy was reserved for the final song, introduced by Lightburn as a “classic, classic, classic song”. As a completely new song, it is surely too early to be describing it in this way. He and The Dears have had a lot of positive press in the last few months but the performances on these European tour dates are likely to win them few new friends, and will have possibly lost them some.
Simon Gleave
Photo: Nighttown
:: back to top ::