AMG Review of Protest [EP]

James Christopher Monger
All Music Guide

Recorded in the relative warmth of the "pre-homeland security" summer of 2001, the Dears' ominous three-song operetta couldn't have been re-released at a more deserving time. Despite their "Great White North" citizenship, Murray Lightburn and his coconspirators have managed to unintentionally capture much of the divisiveness of a second-term Bush administration United States. "Heaven, Have Mercy on Us," with its military snare, snappy flutes, and jarring wall of guitar textures, begins the piece in an appropriately somber/revolutionary manner that echoes pre-Floodland Sisters of Mercy, giving way to the electrifying "Summer of Protest," a track that manages to meld the bassline from Talking Heads' "Psycho Killer" with the orchestral sweep of Radiohead's "How to Disappear Completely" and still sound distinctly Dears. The specter of Kid A looms large over the dramatic finale (actually, everything on Protest is dramatic), "No Hope Before Destruction," a piano-led ballad that finds Lightburn singing "No right/No help/No truth/No worth/No light/No end/No hope" through a distortion/compression box that intermittently cuts out -- think "Everything in Its Right Place." The track leaves the listener both devastated and amped-up with no clear opponent in sight.