Music, at its best, is larger than life; people rarely, if ever, are. Which is why it proves a challenge to reconcile Murray Lightburn–the grandiose, seemingly fearless voice of and visionary behind the Dears–with the self-deprecating telephone caller who bashfully dismisses accusations of brilliance from his home in Montreal.

But brilliance–a stratum this volatile sextet has threatened to breach since its ambitious but financially inhibited 2000 debut, End of a Hollywood Bedtime Story–is now totally in its possession. The group’s second full-length album, No Cities Left, is, to cut to the chase, a masterpiece: 12 intricately orchestrated songs about unashamed notions of love and hope, performed with such authoritative confidence and grandeur that most other new music is dwarfed by it. Released in the midst of an unprecedented Renaissance for Canadian pop (the Hidden Cameras, Stars, Broken Social Scene), No Cities Left is the scene’s crowning jewel, and one of the best records that will come from anywhere this year.

Whether Lightburn is still too close to the album’s maddening, yearlong genesis or simply inclined to deflect compliments, he won’t accept praise easily. Like the repeated allusions to "the light" and "the love" that he uses to describe the conceptual basis of No Cities Left, the frontman would rather credit intangible forces.

"I can’t speak for everyone else, but for me, I still see li’l ol’ me–I still separate myself from what’s being done," he says. "I just consider myself and the band a vehicle for channeling into something that’s huge, and even I don’t know how the fuck we do what we do, to tell you the truth. I just know it happens."

Lightburn isn’t implying intervention of a divine nature, however. Even if he had subscribed to that kind of thing, the making of No Cities Left would probably have seen to it that he stopped.

"Words probably couldn’t express just how much it was destroying us," he says, matter-of-factly. "It was a painful, difficult birth."

Resisting the flirtations of major labels proved easy for the Dears in theory; the group has always conducted itself like a fighting unit of contrary misfits. Although 2001’s four-track EP, Orchestral Pop Noir Romantique, was re-released by Universal Music following impressive sales as an indie, the group chose not to sign on the dotted line for fear that a label’s constant need for status reports would distract them. Instead, Lightburn’s perfectionism ("Fucking spending 45 minutes getting a maraca sound") pushed the band and its resources to the brink of collapse throughout 2002. Four months’ worth of recordings–including up to 500 takes of some songs and almost as many edits–were eventually junked.

"George, our drummer, he was worried that I was gonna turn into Spaceman and spend three years mixing the record," says Lightburn, referencing Spiritualized’s famously troubled and expensive Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space. "I purposely didn’t do that, for him and for the rest of the band."

A last-ditch attempt to mix the record during eight days of cut-rate overnight sessions at a Montreal studio produced satisfactory results, but not without a cost that was more than monetary. Cellist Brigitte Mayes and guitarist Jon Cohen had already left.

Coincidentally or not, No Cities Left seems to bear the bruises of the circumstances that spawned it–notwithstanding the Dears’ already substantial fetish for the sound of high drama. Much of the album bleeds an atmosphere of frustrated longing or barely suppressed rage, whether in the languid nocturnal reverie of "’Cos She’s a Tourist" or the title track’s collective rallying cry to "just keep fighting the end of the world."

"The first album was basically a world crumbling, and this is trying to find the hope," Lightburn says. "It’s mostly about the end of darkness. The record is in search of light that’s there–it’s always been there, it’s just trying to find it. It’s reflective of how we feel about the world around us right now.

"It’s already been dark, before all this talk of war–it’d already been going that way. That’s just, like, all the demons just wailing, just doing their thing, saying, ‘You can’t take this away from us.’ Then you’ve got millions of people saying, ‘Yes, yes we can. We’re certainly gonna fucking try.’"

Although the album’s acute timeliness is somewhat accidental ("It’s hardly The Rising," Lightburn quips about Springsteen’s latest), the singer believes that its intended, much more ambiguous messages are well worth hearing–so much so that it would be a betrayal to limit them to the insular cult of indie kids that dominates the band’s audience.

"The way I see it is, I refuse to discount human beings. I don’t think anybody’s a lost cause–nobody is when it comes to what we have to say. Like I said, the light exists, and it doesn’t mean we’re dealing with people who don’t understand.

"I guess I just don’t really care. I don’t give a fuck. If there’s 10,000 people in front of me, I’m going to do my thing and we’re gonna say what we’re gonna say, and we can get egged or shot or whatever. You’ve got to let the chips fall where they may. If you don’t, you’re never gonna really reach anyone or get anywhere."

He pauses before adding: "Maybe it’s the martyr in us."

And then, he bursts out laughing.