The Dears

Times Infinity Volume One

BY Andrea WarnerPublished Sep 23, 2015

8
On Times Infinity Volume One, the Dears' songs vary in terms of depth and intricacy, but each is a fully realized narrative, layered with wild intricacy. Murray Lightburn's guitar lines bloom in measured expanses and unspool in frenzied bursts; Natalia Yanchak's fingers dance across the keys like stones skipping across a pond; lyrics burst with secret revelations and wry truths. 
 
Not every track is trying to shatter salt-lick hearts. There's a delectable, macabre humour about love at work throughout, particularly on the lead single, "Here's to the Death of All Romance," and the jangly, album-closing crooner "Face of Horrors." A funky lilt belies the tension of Lightburn and Yanchak's blended vocals on the taut "We Lost Everything."
 
"To Hold and Have" features Lightburn at his most vocally restrained, and everything about the instrumentation works. The swell of the strings, the dreamy guitar line — all of it adds a sorrowful warmth to the fraught, tragic romance of lines like, "This life that we fought so hard for / Well, I want more to hold and have." Like your new favourite anthology of short stories — think Alice Munro meets Edgar Allen Poe — Times Infinity Volume One is a magnificent testament to the human heart in all of its complexity.
(Pheromone)

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