From Logan’s Run to Star Trek and onward to dystopian videos from his own band The Dears, Murray Lightburn is a sci-fi freak with a neuromantic streak. And while his postmodern soul and blues may skew too confessional to dispassionate gearheads, it has a way of burrowing inside your ear and laying eggs.
That’s the plan, Lightburn confides below in Listening Post’s interview. But sometimes it’s an accident too.
Whatever. The Dears’ latest effort Missiles is an acquired but nevertheless addictive taste, which has been slowly making its way to the top of our 2008 heap. Featuring multi-movement expositions of love and loss that oscillate between whispering pop and scorching rock, Lightburn’s latest fever dream with spouse and bandmate Natalia Yanchak, at right above, is hard to ignore. Weird, considering how quiet it is.
But these contradictions work to The Dears’ advantage. Listening Post caught up with Lightburn by phone to talk about that sonic tension, as well as sci-fi dystopias, accidentally topical lyrics and why Captain Kirk is the most quotable dude ever.
Wired.com: Your music is heartfelt and romantic, but your website is hilarious. I read a news post there that said if critics hate your new disc, it’s because they hate themselves.
Murray Lightburn: [Laughs] We try to have a sense of humor, but people miss that. That drives me nuts. We’ve always had deadpan humor, but maybe we should be more forthright with it. Wired.com: That said, your disc is pretty freaking serious. You’re uncompromisingly honest.
Murray Lightburn: I think it’s just about trying to reach that place where the music is coming from. We’re not really certain what it is, but we have to throw everything but the kitchen sink at it. It’s really elusive. I reckon that makes our music frustrating for some people. But trying to reach something and never actually quite reaching it, well, that’s the point of The Dears. That is our blessing and curse. Wired.com: I can feel that in the epic tune "Lights Off," which marries two movements together, but never finishes one or starts the other.
Murray Lightburn: Right. How do you make them work together? Do you you just shove them together? But our music is like that. It”s all about movement. If somebody wants three minutes of beats and hooks, they are not necessarily going to get it from this record. I doubt we will ever do that.
Wired.com: Your lyrics are pretty dystopian. The "Money Babies" video feels like a mash of Wall Street and Children of Men, while "22: The Death of All Romance" video features a planet splitting in half. Are you topical on purpose or by accident?
Murray Lightburn: The Dears definitely don’t get involved in world; we just make soul and blues music, but not in the traditional sense. It doesn’t sound like B.B. King or John Lee Hooker, but it’s got the elements and fundamentals. So I guess that is where we are coming from, not from anger but from a desire to spell out a situation and find its optimistic side. We’re just searching for the light like everyone else, because we’re all living in dark places. And there will be moments of anger, but we don’t dwell in it because anger doesn’t solve fuck-all. We’re not really going to solve the world unless we deal with our own shit. I think that attitude would ultimately solve a lot of problems, if people dealt with their own crap and dealt with others in the way they wanted to be dealt with.
Wired.com: So "Money Babies" is a comment on our economic meltdown by accident?
Murray Lightburn: Exactly. The chorus "Our money is elastic" was a silly lyric that I couldn’t get out of my head, but in the end it rings true. And now that it’s out, people are explaining how fitting it is for the our time, with the economy going down in flames. But I wrote the song over a year ago, so it’s interesting. The Dears’ records do reflect what’s going on in the world on another level. A lot of the songs are personal, but having a song called "Dream Job" in a world where people are barely holding onto their jobs is too close for comfort. I don’t know where that came from, but that is how it came out. It’s a metaphor for something else; I’m not writing about the world. But by the time the songs come out, it doesn’t matter. Which goes back to the blessing and curse: The Dears deal with brutal truths.
Wired.com: You like to say the name of your band, don’t you?
Murray Lightburn: I know how totally pretentious that sounds, but we’re not fucking around. People drive to the edge of cliff and look down. The Dears drive off the cliff. Wired.com: The videos have that edge to them. They make great sci-fi. Murray Lightburn: When the director of "Money Babies" Anton Josef first sent the treatment, I thought he nailed the concept. I was a little surprised by how the main dude looked. I thought he was probably too good-looking for a post-apocalypse, with those chiseled features. But I was cool with it in the end.
Wired.com: You seem like a sci-fan. Your web documentary "The Gospel According to The Dears" opens with a hilarious quote from Captain Kirk from Star Trek: "All right, you mutinous, disloyal, computerized half-breed. We’ll see about you deserting my ship."
Murray Lightburn: Yeah, from the episode "This Side of Paradise. I’m a huge sci-fi dude. I’m totally into Star Trek. Each of our webisodes starts with a Kirk quote. There are so many fucking awesome quotes that are perfectly suited to our situation.
Wired.com: What else have you been digging?
Murray Lightburn: Just the other day I watched Logan’s Run, which is so cheaply made that it’s basically a poor man’s Planet of the Apes. It comes from that era of cheaply made sci-fi movies, which have explosions that are so obviously superimposed. But I still love the concept of society of people who have to die young.
Wired.com: Did sci-fi have anything to do with naming your daughter Neptune?
Murray Lightburn: No. We hadn’t come up with a name yet, because we didn’t know if it was a boy or a girl. But for some reason, Neptune was so fitting. When you see this kid and the way she rolls, her name is just Neptune. There is no other name for her. I hope that one day, if she has musical inclination, she can take over the family business.
