The Dears
Coachella Music Festival
Empire Polo Grounds
Indio, California
April 29 & 30 2006
By Victoria Joyce
Photos by Victoria Joyce
We just saw our brand new favorite band at The Coachella Festival. Along the side of the stage we caught up with a couple of The Dears out of Canada for a hasty little interview.
With a jazzy pop international approach along the lines of Sergio Mendez and Brasil 66, The Dears start there and bring a Euro Rock 80-vibe. Close your eyes when you listen to the radio hit “Lost in the Plot.” With its electro-reverb-acoustic opening, lead singer, Murray Lightburn sounds very Morrissey.
The very pretty light-handed keyboard chord progression chorus, “our, love, don’t mess with our love, its so much stronger” circles and swirls into a frenzy and comes back with a furious energy and a Jagger-like texture, “it’s the same old plot line these days.” Haunting and ferocious. We are dizzy. Is it the desert heat or The Dears? Two words: Dear Me!
Their show in the Mojave set is the stand out of Coachella 06 for us. The set up is two lovely long haired ladies on keyboards at both sides of the stage; Valene Jodoin-Keaton and Natalia Yanchak. Murray in the middle with Patrick Krief on guitar and Martin Pelland on bass. Drummer George Donoso in the back.
We say ‘hi’ to the gorgeous Martin and ask for a picture with Valerie. We get the rundown on the band. We gotta know about that voice on the lead singer. “Murray is from Belieze. Our drummer is from Chile. I’m French Canadian. Yeah, we are a real Benneton band” he laughs.
Martin tells us the band was a little nervous about playing the desert fest. “This is our first show in a year. We’ve been working on new songs in the studio. We did it very quickly. We didn’t want to do 50 hours listening to a drum tape.”
Smiling and saying hi to friends and fans Martin looks tired but happy with their set. “Before that we were on the road for two years non-stop.” The petite Natalia tells us this is the best festival they have ever played. “Back stage is beautiful. We have a trailer with a little white picket fence around it. We’ve played festivals all over the world. This is the best,” with a wistful smile, “Belgium was nice too.”
Martin adds, “It’s fun to be here. In front of the fans”
Like we said this band is dreamy cool. Back on the road they are set to play the Montreal Jazz Fest in June, Toronto Harbor Front in July and The V Festivals in the UK in July.
