Montreal Gazette: Mostly, Degeneration Street has places to get lost in. Repeated listenings continue to reveal new layers, but the immediate, epic quality of the songs - a make-or-break factor for Dears devotees - isn't compromised.
Rolling Stone: Yet musically, the LP is a shuffle mix: "Galactic Tides" is an End-time prayer done in Thom Yorke falsetto, "Yesteryear" a Motown strut with choir and harpsichord.
Spin: A corrective after 2008's overreaching downer Missiles, this Canadian band's fifth album heads back to the big, Brit-inspired sounds of 2003's No Cities Left.
Entertainment Weekly: Singer Murray Lightburn's somersaulting pipes soar over a tangle of brawny guitars, and while their tense theater-rock evokes everyone from Coldplay to Arcade Fire, the Dears are expert practitioners.
Degeneration Street is out now via Dangerbird Records.
Enjoy this bonus video of The Dears performing "Blood" from last Friday's Late Show with David Letterman: