It appears Murray Lightburn, the lead singer of Montreal band The Dears, has a new solo album coming out. But the only details we know about it have come in the form of a Joe Ollmann comic strip.
In a comic posted on The Comics Journal, the cartoonist explains a recent road trip he took with Lightburn to what he thought would be New York City (but ended up being to Nanuet, New York instead) to have the musician's new album mastered to vinyl.
"The thought of a rawk-n-roll road-trip to NYC was too enticing, I said yes!" Ollmann, the author of the recently released "Science Fiction" graphic novel, says in the strip. The trek takes them across the border from Montreal into New York State, but not before the duo stop at a duty-free shop to purchase some "operating whiskey."
From there Lightburn and Ollmann meet Carl Rowatti, "the vinyl mastering guy" who works on Lightburn's album. Rowatti, who has worked on a vast number of iconic albums, is the owner and chief engineer of Trutone Mastering Labs located in Nanuet, "just 35 minutes north of midtown Manhattan."
Ollmann describes the studio — which includes a platinum record of Sugar Hill Gang's "Rapper's Delight" which Rowatti worked on — as a place where "it feels more like music being made in a Soviet-realist film than with laptops and apps." The process takes all day with the cartoonist feeling a bit out of his league as Lightburn and Rowatti "talk shop."
After talking about possibly creating a Gorillaz-like band and naming it Stilletoz in honor of a nearby strip club, the pair head back to Montreal so Lightburn can be back in time for wife Natalia Yanchak's birthday (which was May 3) and his daughter's girl guide ceremony. The comic ends with Lightburn behind the wheel telling Ollmann the Stilletoz band name should instead be "Super Boobs" because "that's what we are."
There's been no official news regarding Lightburn's album, and on the musician's photography-oriented personal site he wrote "I think I have to get back to my 'day job'" in a blog post recently, but didn't elaborate further.
The Dears are currently off the road and released their last studio album "Degeneration Street" in 2011. Lightburn also directed a band documentary last year entitled "Never Destroy Us: The Dears At Pasaguero."
