The Dears have not gone away and come back, but they have been transformed: by experience, by necessity, by life and its manifold curveballs. And with their new album Missiles they have emerged as elder statesmen of the Canadian indie rock renaissance. Recorded quickly, the album is a feast of stripped-down arrangements and raw emotion served up like a rustic meal, its songs polished but still containing traces of the rough soil from which they were born. The most explicit example is the affecting final track, 'Saviour,' whose vocal track - an original demo take, recorded with a hand-held microphone only moments after the final lyrics were written - remains unadulterated, vulnerable amongst the organ swells and chorus of children's voices. The music is restrained, yet there is an urgency to the lyrics.