The Dears @ Richards and Richards

Wednesday night I went to the postponed Dears show at Richards and Richards. My friend Lester has had a lot of good to say about the Dears live show, and basically told me that I had to go to this show. So you can imagine I had some high expectations going into this show. Were they met? Absolutely.

I cannot for the life of me figure out how The Dears are still playing a venue the size of Richards, however I won’t complain. Their sound at times was huge, and enveloping, creating a mood all to itself in the small venue. I am a big fan of No Cities Left so those songs rocked me the hardest. However the new songs from Gang of Losers really sounded good live, much better than how they sound on the album. I somewhat wish they had the vocals turned up a little higher at times, as some of the songs where a bit hard to hear. The bass on the other hand was completely pounding. Some highlights for me were:

The crowd singing along the end of We Can Have It “It won’t ever be what we want…”

The killer backup vocals by Valerie and Natalia.

The ending of Never Destroy Us when they are all screaming.

Death or Life We Want You. “Nobody wants you but we want you…”

Postcard From Purgatory. What an epic song this is live. From the start stop riffs, to the anthemic start, the massive feedback, the clarinet in the middle to the all out explosion of music to finish the song. Wow.

So yes The Dears put on one hell of a show. Probably one of the best shows I have seen at Richards on Richards.

The Bloodlines from Saskatoon did a solid job opening the show. Very energetic and entertaining. Maygen Kardash on keyboards is a huge crowd tease, totally giving the crowd flirtatious looks. You can tell she and guitarist/singer SJ are brothers, they share a very similar face. At the end of the show SJ brought a girl from the crowd on stage. She was rather ripped and fell as she tried to climb up. When she did get up she danced around on stage like she was at a nightclub. I was sure she was going to knock over Paul the other guitarist and singer. She did however manage to kick the mic out of the kick drum, and occasionally get tangled in the guitar leads. A pretty funny site to see.