Murray Lightburn doesn't know how long his band The Dears will last.

Shortly after the release of their 2006 album Gang of Losers, the Montreal-based band experienced a Chernobyl-sized meltdown when two-thirds of the band quit, leaving Lightburn and his wife Natalia Yanchak to recruit Yann Geoffroy, Jason Kent and Chris McCarron in time to record the sturm-und-angst breakup album of all time, Missiles, in 2008.

Still, the sullen singer and songwriter admits he's not sure if the lineup will hang around long enough to record another album.

"It depends if they're into it," Lightburn says bleakly. "It would be great if I could look into the future, but being in The Dears is like any job where you're working with other people. Sometimes it's great, other times it's not."

Lightburn's outlook shouldn't be surprising to fans of the band that broke on to the international scene and made Montreal a centre for alternative music with their 2003 album No Cities Left. The singer, who's been described as "the black Morrissey," is, I suspect, once-again indulging in a fatalism that only barely hides the fact he's a big romantic.

"The new spirit of the band is the spirit of being aware, but what that is, I don't know. I don't practise what I preach."

The truth is Lightburn doesn't really worry about who's in the band because, ultimately, he is The Dears.

"We've had a number of changes over the years and the new people know what the band's sound is. These songs exist somewhere that's bigger than the group."

Whether the feelings inside the band have gotten better, Lightburn isn't going to say, but his song- writing seems to have gotten even darker on Missiles, and his romantic poses and pretentious antics have turned into something more cynical. Now, when he talks about the band, he talks about moral integrity.

"I think of us as borderline existentialists. What's good about The Dears is also what makes us hard to listen to. We want our music to reach a lot of people, but we have to remain truthful to the work and people don't always want to hear the truth."

That's the running theme of the band's latest project, a long-term video diary called The Gospel According to The Dears, streaming on their website thedears.org.

"After being together for 15 years, I want to know why The Dears exists," Lightburn says.

In the meantime, life, even for The Dears, carries on. Lightburn has written half a new album, fathered a new baby, listens to a lot of sci-fi music, and this summer will be producing a new band.

"There aren't enough hours in the day to be everything I want to be," he says, laughing, and for once, sounds happy.