Mp3 of the week: Dear Leader

DOWNLOAD: Dear Leader, "Monuments and Shrines" (mp3)

They Google much better these days — no thanks to nuclear nutbag Kim Jong Il — but otherwise DEAR LEADER are the same gorgeously, mournfully grandiose bastards they’ve been since Aaron Perrino left the Sheila Divine to explore the emotional potential of stadium rock, or the stadium potential of emotional rock, or something like that. “These are dangerous times!” he howls on the opening track, and on The Alarmist (Lunch), DL find their ways to pricklier places — some unexpectedly quieter, others (like this one) angrier and louder. The joke about their debut was that it sounded like U2 minus the humility; here they could almost pass for the Pixies, with Perrino's TK subbing for Frank Black's . . . They celebrate the CD release tonight at the Paradise.