The Dears: Oslo, Hackney: Live Review

The Dears
Oslo, Hackney
18th February 2026

Nine albums deep and into a fourth decade of intense and intimate live shows, Canadian veterans The Dears show no signs of slowing down. Steve Morgan gets his elbows up in appreciation

Brave is the band that dares to use the golden tonsils of Edith Piaf as walk-on music.
But The Dears have never shirked a challenge – this is an act that goes all in. In front of a backdrop that reads ‘The Dears Est. 1995’, Murray Lightburn and company enter backed by the strains of La Vie En Rose. A few minutes later, when the slow, funk groove of Gotta Get My Head Right deliciously shifts gear with a knowing nod to the chord progression from Piaf’s classic, it all makes sense.

The lead-off track on the Montreal natives’ ninth studio album, Life Is Beautiful! It’s both the perfect reminder of why this band means so much to those who have tracked them down the years, as well as leaving the dangling question of how the stellar success afforded contemporaries has somehow managed to elude them. Not that Lightburn seems to care. As he says three songs in, “when the sleeves are rolled up, and the jacket’s off, you know it’s time for rock and roll.” You get the sense he could be doing this in an empty room happily enough, never mind in front of a healthy and appreciative crowd on an utterly filthy Hackney night.

Tonight’s set – one of a whistle-stop, six-gigs, six nights UK visit – is a thoughtfully curated affair. Five songs from Life Is Beautiful! feature, plus choice cuts from the band’s early 2000s albums, No Cities Left and Gang of Losers. Lightburn, son of a saxophone-parping pastor, remains one of the circuit’s most watchable frontmen; a man deeply in love with rock and roll’s transformative power. The years have been kind to him, too. In his crisp white shirt and smart strides, he barely breaks sweat behind dark shades, an impressive feat given his non-stop antics. Whether chopping at his guitar or beating himself across the chest with a pair of tambourines, he offers a masterclass in working a crowd, his voice still sonorous and soulful. To his right, Natalia Yanchak, his wife and keyboard player, is the polar opposite in stage craft, a study in intense concentration that makes the pair an intriguing, eye-catching contrast.

Picking a highlight is tough amid the 19-song set; the new material slots in so well around the old, the band’s grasp of a gut-punching key change not weakened by time. Just when you think the cake is iced, there’s another layer. Time-honoured favourite Lost In The Plot pitches the trademark light-and-shade swirl of Yanchak’s spaciously atmospheric keyboards against Jeff Luciani’s thumping drums and swirling guitars that rise to a crescendo, all topped by Lightburn’s half-screamed, half-sung vocal. A heady mix of the territory mapped out by Morrissey – with whom The Dears once toured –  Blur and Suede – it matches all three for intensity. Hate Then Love, with its impassioned, singalong “I’ll swear, I’ll swear, I’ll swear to you” refrain, is equally terrific, redolent of the anthemic, widescreen ‘Big Music’ of the early 80s that spawned U2, Simple Minds and Echo and the Bunnymen. How The Dears would have thrived in that decade.

Disclaimer, from 2008’s Missiles, is a gorgeous slow burner which finds Lightburn as avenging angel over a funereal melody evoking the glacial splendour of a Berlin-era Bowie, or early Ultravox’s Hiroshima Mon Amour. Another newbie, Doom Pays, pitched somewhere between vintage Blondie and The Jam, is a frenetic stomper tackling the eternal battle between internal and external forces.

Perhaps the peak is the stunning, skittering math rock of Here’s To The Death Of All The Romance, where Pornography-era Cure meets the early work of 4AD darlings Dead Can Dance to thunderous effect. After an intense hour and ten minutes, the band leaves to a rapturous reception. Lightburn swiftly returns to deliver a touching monologue on family life and the passing of time ahead of a solo rendition of Ticket To Immortality, a celebration of a life with a nose pressed up against the glass, outside looking in. Rejoined by the band, the night ends with another old fave, 22: The Death Of All The Romance. Here, Lightburn and Yanchak swap vocals over a delicious, rich melody tinged with Serge Gainsbourg or Scott Walker. As the song gallops to a tumultuous climax, with a wash of cymbals and three guitars jostling for space, the crowd joins Lightburn as the wheel turns full circle to where we came in. “Life is beautiful, life is beautiful, life is beautiful”, the singer shouts, fists furiously pumping, while Yanchak’s face cracks into the broadest of warm grins.

After “30 years on the ice”, this is a band still skating with grace and verve, their sonic template intact, their themes and ideas, whether tender ballads or full workouts – songs for the bloodied, bruised but unbowed.  “We love you, London, you always come through,” says Lightburn. The feeling was mutual.

~

You can find The Dears Here on Instagram and on Bandcamp

All words by Steve Morgan. You can find Steve on BlueSky and Instagram

Photographs by Robyn Skinner