The Dears : Degeneration Street

[rating=4.50]

The average male rock fan’s opinion of musicals is likely to encompass the word “suck,” but hand him The Dears’ Degeneration Street, and unless he’s a pure-bred metalhead, it’ll more likely go something like “…awesome…”  The Dears’ follow up to 2008’s dramatic Missiles plays out like a Broadway soundtrack composed not from the 20th Century detritus of the theatre stage, but from the Pop/Rock Canon of late 60s arena rock to turn-of-the-century indie anthems.  All the sung plot development and dialogue is mercifully left on the tage, leaving only the raw emotion and melodrama of a masterfully crafted pseudo-apocalyptic, rock ‘n’ roll, sci-fi tragedy.

“Blood” mashes Bends-era Radiohead with Strokes hipster cool, and delivers the story’s least cryptic line: “Since I was a baby I have always been this way.  I can see it coming from a million miles away.”  It’s as close to a storyline as the album gets, but Dears’ lead Murray Lightburn is captivating, and the line foreshadows the unnamed darkness that threatens the Pink Floydian “Galactic Tides” and opener “Omega Dog,” which strutts gracefully around the intersection of pop, rock and soul while Lightburn’s Prince-ly falsetto portends that “it happened,” without saying what exactly it is.  Arcade Fire’s shuffling, percussive guitar scratches at the door on “Stick w/ Me Kid,” which seamlessly blends melodramatic catch-phrases, proverbs and prophesies as the rhythm beats along with a nervous, unspoken fear.

But true to their indie contemporaries, The Dears find a flickering light in the shadows of impending doom, crying “I’ll always love you…no matter what, no matter how” on the made-for-Broadway “5 Chords” and the nostalgic “Yesteryear,” which projects home movies of dancing teenagers onto the bombed-out, crumbling walls while The Jam’s new wave radio pop soundtracks the flickering memories.  If not for the strength of the individual songs, it might all be a little too much well, drama, but as the closing title track echoes pop music’s most enduring assertion—all you need is love—and the curtain falls with a flurry of sci-fi synthesizers, the album closes with the same satisfied fulfillment as the closing notes of a favorite album, appreciated again for the first time.

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