Celebrator by Dear Boy – Album Review
By David Schuster
Dear Boy are the Stone Roses of this decade; jangly lead guitar over warm, fuzzy chords, clever lyrics with moments of poignancy and joy. Celebrator has it all in bucket-hat fulls. It’s one of those records that, the first time you play it, seems at once familiar but new, like an old favourite, forgotten then re-discovered. That something this accomplished is only the band’s second album, is nothing short of astonishing.
It’s always a good thing when the first single from any release properly reflects the character of the other tracks, and ‘Kelly Green’ does exactly that. From the opening drum beat and sustained chord you’re in a world of endless summer, fluffy fun and smiling people. Like The La’s ‘There She Goes’, this is a tune that radio stations will wheel out as soon as there’s a hint of sunny weather. This being the case, it’s something of a shame that the album isn’t coming out until October. That said, it’s coincidentally the month that ‘There She Goes’ was re-issued, and it didn’t do that any harm.
Dear Boy, 2025
“Bold move”
As the Wedding Present’s David Gedge highlights, in his infamous rant on the intro to ‘Something and Nothing’; in a studio setting there’s quite an art to getting, “a nice, smooth, distorted sound, that’s not completely interfering and overloaded.” So, with any band that has this as a core element, such as Half Man Half Biscuit or the Jesus and Mary Chain, the worry is that the magic of their live performance won’t translate into the studio.
Or, conversely, that they won’t be able to recreate that sound on stage. There’s no such fears for Celebrator however, as Dear Boy chose to perform the tracks live, across a period of only two weeks. Lead vocalist Ben Grey explained the thinking behind this bold move, “With so many people obsessed with algorithms, AI, and whatever, we wanted to do something completely different. Recording live. Human connection. Celebrating what four best friends can do together with their instruments.”
‘Wanderlow’, ‘Balcony’ and ‘Inevitable’ are all strong enough tracks to become future singles. From the sustained feedback of Austin Hayman’s guitar, low in the mix but adding a hurdy-gurdy style drone, to the resigned irony of the lyrics on ‘Inevitable’, “Do you love me, the way that I do?”, there’s a lot to like in Dear Boy’s music. The fact that there’s four easily identifiable singles on a sophomore album is a record company’s dream, and says a lot about the quality of the songs here.
“A delight”
There’s some nice changes of feel and pace across the release: ‘Now More Than Ever’ has an introspective feel, whilst ‘The Address’, and ‘Celebrator’ have hip-hop rhythms, courtesy of drummer Keith Cooper, who was co-founder of the band with Grey. The latter, title track, like many of Dear Boy’s songs works moves along to the deep, crisp notes of talented bassist Lucy Lawrence. It also includes a short spoken vocal drop, presumably also by Lawrence, that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.
The record closes with ‘Daylight Savings’, the most experimental piece, which trades traditional rhythmic elements for gated noise. I’d have liked the band to have explored more of this direction.
However, it would have been foolish to break the spell that so clearly hung over the birth of this release, and Producer Aron Kobayashi Ritch was clever enough not to risk doing that. As the band said, “This time there was unbridled enthusiasm. We were falling for each other again. Celebrator was the only name for this album and this experience.”
Celebrator is a delight from start to finish. Buy it and make summer last just that little bit longer.
David Schuster describes himself as an “adventurer, collector, musician and writer. Not necessarily in that order.” Growing up west of the Pennine hills of the UK and living his adult life east of them, he’s inclined to think that the Wars of the Roses were a mistake. David loves discovering new bands and musicians and is happiest listening to live music. He has travelled extensively in the UK and is fascinated by the variety, history and landscapes of the thousands of islands that comprise the British Isles. David is always reassured when online shops confirm that he’s not a robot.
