Music

The Dears set to release new album early next year

by Ciaran Thompson

Last week The Dears set up shop at Santa Cruz Mission Hall in Montreal for three consecutive shows showcasing their forthcoming as-yet-untitled album. Before the third evening lead vocalist Murray Lightburn sat down for an interview with AUX and spoke about where the band are at in terms of releasing the album.

“I just got some mock-ups of artwork today and we’re getting close,” he said. “Song titles are in the bag. We couldn’t release the album next week or even this year because we’re also editing down all those Mexican performances and it needs to be mixed. Plus the artwork is not even close to being done so visually we’re still working on the identity of the album. It’s a whole thing, I don’t want to call it a multimedia event because I hate that term, but there’s definitely a lot of stuff attached to the release.”

Back in May the band took a trip down to Mexico City where they performed the new album in full for the first time. Video footage featuring the new track “Omega Dog” has since come out.

“I think we’re releasing it (Omega Dog) as a single really soon, the studio version, which is even more wide-screen. The live version is definitely effective, it’s still immediate and intense, but the studio version is also pretty compelling and something we’ve been listening to over and over. I’m excited for people to hear the studio version.”

According to Murray the new record, the band’s first since 2008’s Missiles, will be released in February of next year.