It’s hard too believe that it’s just a build up to the power-rock of 5 chords. Advanced single Omega dog is a funky OK Computerish opener to the album, with an encore that holds more bombast than the average speech of a pressured North-African dictator. If you consider Degeneration Street’s sound and sentiment to be retro instead of outdated that would make it much more tolerable. Let there be no mistake, Murray Lightburn is a man with very, very big shoes and instead of keeping him within bounds, wife and band members seem to stimulate him going all out in a manner that might have been tolerated within certain scenes back in the nineties, but today makes him sound like guy screaming in a dessert of his own making.
Some would call it excessive and snooty I would call it sumptuous. Degeneration street sees the return of many of the same musicians of Gang of Losers and consequently it has the same energy. Missiles (2008) was a bleak indistinct album, marked by creative tensions within the band that reduced The Dears to the husband & wife duo that is its axes. Gang of Losers (2006) was angrier and rockier but I think apart from me and the Canadians not many people liked it. The Dears received international attention in 2003 after the release their critically acclaimed second album No Cities Left, a magnificent portrait of universal affliction.
The title to The Dears fifth studio album Degeneration Streets suggests he’s still not the life of the party. Not so much for the vocal similarities as the tireless and shameless wallowing in misery. Closest thing for me personally is Murray Lightburn of The Dears. For those of us unable to grasp the brilliance of Radiohead, there has never been a true heir to Morrissey as the Prince of Pain (I know he’s still active, he just doesn’t seem to be in a lot of pain these days).
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