Good Dear Good’s ‘forlorn dance music’ is back with new EP ‘Sook’ | Music | Halifax, Nova Scotia

The phrase ‘opposites attract’ comes to mind when thinking of Good Dear Good, one of the city’s premier indie pop-rock bands.

Their music twists listeners’ expectations, pairing positive, upbeat tunes and honey-sweet harmonies with gloom and doom lyrics. Typically, you would expect songs with lyrics about settling for love despite unideal conditions to be a little on the sadder side, but Good Dear Good would rather dance through the pain. Their upcoming EP, Sook, will continue this trend in earnest.

Good Dear Good’s frontman, Tim Hatcher, formed the band with his partner Brandon MacDonald, after dropping out of university and moving from Cape Breton to Dartmouth. With their classmates from the NSCC’s Music Arts program, Hatcher and MacDonald would form the band in 2018 and release their debut EP Arrival in 2023. In addition to Hatcher and MacDonald, the band also consists of Maisie Gilbert, Heather Durning, and Coonor Booth.

With their second project fast approaching, The Coast spoke to Hatcher about the singles they’ve released so far, the production of Sook and why Hatcher links positivity and negativity in his music.

“We started in the studio in November 2024,” says Hatcher. “The songs themselves have kind of spanned over five years. The oldest one is, like, five years old.”

That song would be “Each Other’s Best”, the second single off Sook. Written in 2020, the song details two people struggling to understand each other. It was an acoustic jam the band would bust out at live shows, and it always received a great response from fans. While it didn’t make the first EP, Hatcher made sure it was on the second.

“This time around, we brought it to Dan (Ledwell; their producer), just being like, this is something that we do acoustically,” says Hatcher. “He really helped build it up and added in the horns and got the percussion going, and all that kind of stuff, and really helped bring it to life as a recorded version.”

While “Each Other’s Best” was written solely by Hatcher, he says the songs on Sook are mostly made up of cowrites, distinguishing itself from the band’s first EP. This includes their latest single, “Fool Me”, which was written alongside MacDonald, as well as sister folk duo Moira and Claire. The song is about prioritizing love over self-worth.

“I had the guitar parts figured out, I had these verses and pre-chorus, chorus ideas on the guitar, and like, a little bit of like, verse melody, but I didn’t really have much else to go on,” says Hatcher. “They just came over one day, and we decided to try to write something and brought that to the table. We wrote half of the song together in one day, and then a few months later, we went over to their place and finished it up.”

As for the duality found throughout Good Dear Good’s discography, Hatcher says it’s been a product of his own musical interests.

“It’s not necessarily a conscious choice,” says Hatcher. “It’s just kind of like, sonically, I like the catchy kind of upbeat stuff, but then whenever I’m talking about something, I must just be a complainer or something.”

“I’ve always had a hard time connecting with or writing positive music, which I guess is just a judge of my own character, but like, I just have a harder time connecting with that kind of stuff, or taking it as seriously. I kind of like the duality of being able to move to the music, and then also get a different meaning when you’re listening to the lyrics or reading the lyrics. It’s definitely a theme for us—forlorn dance music.”

The artwork of the EP mirrors this with a retro-tech aesthetic, invoking mundanity while still promising fun through colourful phones and a chorus of hands pushing against Hatcher’s face. The photos for the album were shot by photographer Paul Atwood.

With two industry awards under their belt (one from Music Nova Scotia and another from the East Coast Music Association), Good Dear Good has already established themselves as a noteworthy band in Halifax, and while awards aren’t everything, Hatcher has appreciated the hardware, as well as all the connections he’s made with the music community so far.

“There’s still little surprises weaved in, and through it all, that kind of movement upward in our careers, but it’s definitely been like a conscious goal as well, to work our way up.”

Good Dear Good will be performing alongside Public Service for Daniel James McFadyen’s upcoming Light House Arts Centre show on Sept. 19. They are also planning some headlining gigs for when the EP arrives later this month.