deary lean into their devotion to shoegaze with seven-and-a-half minute single “Alfie”

When deary first formed during lockdown, it was a new beginning for the three-piece and an escapism from their deflated routine. “Everything had come to a standstill,” guitarist Ben Easton recalls. “I needed some creative goals to help me through that time.” With his previous band losing direction, it reflected a world stalled.

Enter vocalist and guitarist Dottie Cockram. “I’d just graduated and felt very lost,” she says. “When I received Ben’s message, it felt like something important was about to begin.” Writing over Easton’s layered guitars and samples, rather than starting alone, it was freeing for Cockram. “It felt like weaving through these layers and finding something that felt like a beginning, when everything around me felt like an end.”

From the outset, the pair bonded over a shared language of influences like Loveless by My Bloody Valentine. Radiohead, Portishead, and Jeff Buckley. “I first heard Loveless when I was 14 or 15, and it blew my mind,” Easton says. “When Dottie and I finally met in person, it all just came out.” That dream-pop vocabulary remains foundational, even when they flirt with drifting elsewhere.

“Alfie” is the latest single from their debut album Birding, out 3 April via Bella Union. It marks the moment the band stopped trying to force what deary should be. “After such a busy time touring, we really felt in our own groove and self-assured going into the writing [of Birding],” Easton explains. “A lot of it flowed naturally and really fell into place during those four months in the studio.” Now operating as a trio alongside drummer Harry Catchpole, the band sounds more certain and decisive. “We give a lot less of a shit about what people think of us now,” Easton adds. “We have confidence in our artistry, and it feels natural, that’s where our best work comes from.”

Appropriately, “Alfie” was the first track formed during the recording of Birding and ultimately became its emotional apex. Structurally, it’s more ambitious than anything they’ve released before, flowing as a pop song stretched wide with space for instrumentals that glisten and inspire the submission to sensation over words. Catchpole likens it to the emotional weight of how they felt listening to Sigur Rós’ “#8 (Popplagið).” He adds, “it’s a huge crescendo conclusion, but also a centre point where there’s a real catharsis in such an emotional release.”

The band also honours the atmosphere of listening to the likes of Slowdive or Cocteau Twins for the first time. “Shoegaze can make you feel like your feet aren’t touching the ground. Even though the instrumentation is heavy, there is a weightlessness to it,” Cockram expresses.

Like their wave of sound, the title “Alfie” is also playfully whimsy. “At the beginning, it was candidly about a dog,” Cockram admits, but the song expanded into something more symbolic. “Life felt like it was going so fast around us,” she says. “Loss is such a tough, but integral part of life... we wanted to capture that fragility in all its forms. The heartbreak, but also the ineffable gratitude of being able to experience it.”

If “Alfie” is someone’s first introduction to deary, the band hopes listeners feel transported. “It takes its time and lets us show our appreciation for shoegaze as its own art form. I’d hope our love would be able to translate to the listener and that they’d be able to attach their own memories to our music, as I think that’s something really special about music.”

​For a band named after an antiquated word that felt “strange and emasculating” to Easton, deary is also a journey of self-discovery. “I started playing gigs in a very male-heavy, very angry London scene in the early/mid-2010s, which I always felt I was too soft for. I’ve found a bit more authenticity in myself through deary.” On “Alfie,” despite the nod to shoegaze’s giants, they clearly stand comfortably in who they are amongst the cathedral of sound that envelopes them.