London dream pop trio deary explore humanity’s impact on nature and ourselves on their excellent debut album, Birding.
Release date: April 3, 2026 | Bella Union | Facebook | Instagram | Bandcamp | Website
Spring always feels like a reconnection to nature. In the North American Midwest, we are alternatingly getting beautiful days of sunshine and days of violent, sometimes destructive thunderstorms. After winter’s cold, these extremes make one snap out of the dark and grey malaise and witness in real time the growth and promise of flora and fauna in extended daylight, soothing over seasonal depression with the challenges of renewal and fresh birth. For all of its inherit sad and dreamy characteristics, shoegaze always feels like a spring and summer genre to me. There may still be melancholy, but the dream pop side of shoegaze elicits a wistful, hopeful feeling. After all, the birds are beginning to sing their songs, so how bad can things really be?
Amidst the blossoming and blooming greens these birds sing and scurry, flitting about in search of food and mates. Some birds, like the cardinal, are beacons of hope and life, but there are vultures and ravens as omens of death and misfortune. From the tiniest of hummingbirds to living dinosaurs like cassowaries, birds have captured a wealth of humanity’s curiosities and metaphors. So, for their debut album, the London-based dream pop trio deary has chosen the title Birding, the act of watching and identifying these curious winged creatures in all of their multitudes. Across 11 tracks, deary explores the human condition like a trek through a bird sanctuary with more dynamic sound than their previous EP, Aurelia, which was among my favorite listens in 2024.
Aurelia was 20 minutes or so of pure dream pop haze, singer Dottie Cockram’s soft coo floating over ocean currents of guitar effects and snapping drums courtesy of Ben Easton and Harry Catchpole, respectively. Their consistency of sound made the EP feel almost like a long ambient track, easy to get lost in all of the shimmer and reverb. On Birding, however, deary pivots into a richer variety of textures. There are more acoustic guitars, punchier drums, and the occasional wall of sound. “Smile”, the opening track which addresses domestic abuse, builds layers of guitars into dramatic swells juxtaposed with Cockram’s soft, melodic voice while the heavy theme juxtaposes the bittersweet melody. This track would be right at home on Treasure by the Cocteau Twins, an artist deary holds dear as they immediately bonded over shared appreciation for Cocteau Twins frontwoman Liz Fraser.
Though the shoegaze influences are obvious, deary also reminds me of The Cure at times. Their penchant for low, melodious bass lines and spindling clean guitar licks beneath the shoegaze fog on “Smile” and the following “Seabird” lock into Catchpole’s drums perfectly, calling to mind Disintegration‘s rhythm parts. Ambience still makes its way into deary‘s oeuvre on tracks like “Gysophila” and the titular closing track, each brief enough to act as a sort of interlude and coda, tying every experimentation together. Meanwhile, “Garden of Eden” and “No Sweeter Feeling” veer into acoustic indie folk and trip hop, respectively, displaying more experimentation from the band than ever before. These tracks both work fine and break up deary‘s shoegaze foundation in ways that I hope they continue to explore.
When deary is at their best, however, they are still firmly in the dream pop/shoegaze lane that have brought them this far. “Blue Ribbon” is probably my faborite track on Birding, channeling ’90s alternative and touches of trip hop while maintaining gossamer threads on a bright spring lawn. The vocal refrain of ‘I believed in you/savior, save me‘ is both delicate and affecting over the band’s dense, ethereal music. Despite my love for “Blue Ribbon”, “Alma” is the track that gets tuck in my head the most. This is textbook dream pop, shimmering and hooky, mesmerizing and satisfying in ways that most modern shoegaze bands never quite achieve. While it may fit neatly into the 4AD wheelhouse of sounds, it is so masterfully executed that it could easily linger amongst the genre’s entire history of highlights.
deary doesn’t reinvent the (Catherine) wheel on Birding, but they do channel all of their influences into a lush ride, solidifying themselves into the kind of band Aurelia promised two years ago. They are, along with She’s Green and Mo Dotti, among the best of the shoegaze and dream pop revivalists, sticking to classic sounds, but flourishing high above the rest of the crowd with all of the knack for perfection as nature itself, at once feather light and sharp as a beak. Birding is an outstanding debut, and deary will undoubtedly make their mark in the shoegaze world.
