Information/Write-up
Stars are a pop band who sound best on a rock equalizer setting. They aren't loud and don't need to be-- their third and best album, Set Yourself on Fire, is a great example of sonic efficiency. Its songs are packed like a Geo Tracker for a cross-country road trip, yet nothing gets crushed or stuffed or buried. It might be the best orchestral pop album of the past year, only it doesn't sound orchestral, at least not according to the outsize string-and-reverb model favored by bands like Oasis or Spiritualized. If you find me a recent album that towers higher with fodder so virtuosically managed and manipulated, I'll give you 20 dollars and jump in a foreboding body of water from a height.
It took me two months to plow through Heart, Stars' 2003 sophomore effort. Two songs, "What the Snowman Learned About Love" and "Elevator Love Letter", sailed so high above the rest, I demurred at the possibility of imperfection. The album relied on standout riffs and jags of cathexis; it was, in essence, a collection of rifftastic one-liners, and one-liners sometimes fall face first. Set Yourself on Fire is more full-bodied; nothing is so singular it isn't worth fleshing out or adding to, which bolsters the weaker songs without watering down the cream.
The album opens with a disquieting epigram: "When there's nothing left to burn, you must set yourself on fire." A procession of lugubrious strings gives "Your Ex-Lover Is Dead" the hugely premonitory feel of Heart opener "What the Snowman Learned About Love" without its flimsy grandiloquence. Amy Millan may whisper the refrain, "live through this and you won't look back," but the song is no chore; in fact, it's an apt segue into the astonishing title track.
"Set Yourself on Fire" takes Millan's mandate and soars with it. A lo-res synth arpeggio carries the song alongside a propulsive drumbeat and cascading strings. The song performs a nimble time change in its bridge before staking a final salvo-- "20 years asleep before we sleep... forever"-- over an icy coda. You might hear it on a Peter Pan bus, north of New Haven all industrial barrens, sunny cold mid-December afternoon after leaving your girlfriend, and you might cry.
The subsequent two tracks defibrillate the heartbroken. "Ageless Beauty" will sell Arts & Crafts' first ringtone, just watch. Its simple changes are dusted with zippy auxiliary lines playing peek-a-boo. "Reunion"'s chorus is so bathetic it's entrancing: "All I want is one more chance," sings Torquil Campbell, "to be young and wild and free." Rather than a second refrain, they give us a spry guitar lick that could make its chorus and secede if it wished.
-pitchfork
Set Yourself on Fire is about breaking up and breaking down, and as such the album feels wontedly cathartic, like the moments right after you hit your emotional nadir and start getting your shit together. Stars handle the mood delicately with few slip-ups; my only complaint is that they never handle much of anything else. Save "The Big Fight"-- which is tame, slow and lounged-out-- there's no controversy, only half-smiles and the soggy aftermath. But even the dearest numbers have faint, nagging undercurrents. The band make no effort to avoid the inevitable charges of over-sentimentality; in fact, they indulge the calls: "The cold is a vindictive bride," reads their website bio, "she'll trap you between her thighs and turn your heart to ice if you're not careful." Despite overblown romanticism run rampant, Stars somehow remain understated. It's the "Soft Revolution", as the terrific penultimate track declaims. Hop aboard.
The album opens with an audio clip of a man saying "When there's nothing left to burn you have to set yourself on fire." I disagree. When I have nothing left to burn I'll go swimming, or make pottery, or play tennis. In fact, I'm pretty sure setting myself on fire is right at the bottom of my list of things to do when I run out of things to burn. Regardless, calling "Set Yourself on Fire" anything but gorgeous is a mistake that, if I have my way, could prove fatal. "Your Ex-Lover Is Dead" is one of the most beautiful songs to ever come into existence, and it alone warrants the purchase of this album. Add in a handful of other amazing pop-tunes and you're looking at one of the best pop albums ever. No joke! Stars: Amy Millan (vocals, guitar); Torquil Campbell (vocals, keyboards); Evan Cranley (guitar, horns, bass guitar); Chris Seligman (horns, keyboards); Pat McGee (drums). With 2005's SET YOURSELF ON FIRE, the Montréal ensemble Stars grows new blooms from out of its sturdy electro-pop stem. This is largely thanks to the addition of a real drummer (Pat McGee), who opens things up for the band's third full-length album. The raised hand on the cover might lead one to take this record for an angry political outcry, but if so, it's the sort one makes while falling in love at a college rally. Torquil Campbell and Amy Millan trade vocal duties and combine on rich harmonies over alt-rock frameworks painted with thick electronic pulses, sweeping horn and string sections, bass, cello, harmonica, and electric guitar. It's a combination big enough to encompass both the melodramatic grandeur of teenage emotions and the awareness that such feelings are unreliable. Like their Canadian brethren Broken Social Scene (bassist Evan Cranley plays in both bands), Stars freely collapses pop music's pigeonholes into one rich, new-yet-familiar sound. "He Lied About Death" takes a few passing jabs at George W. Bush, but this band knows their best contribution to the cause is crafting epic love songs for the people to cry and dance to, and they contribute very well with SET YOURSELF ON FIRE.
Another Montréal-based band, the indie-pop darlings Stars, release this full-length album entitled "Set Yourself On Fire". The Juno Award nominated group have been lauded by Rolling Stone, the New York Times, and the London Times.
Rolling Stone (No. 969, p.108) - 4 stars out of 5 - "[Stars] build cerebral torch songs out of boy-girl vocals, strings, synths, guitars and the occasional French horn..." Spin (p.91) - "[T]hese chamber-pop libertines write lush, saucer-eyed ballads..." - Grade: A- Entertainment Weekly (No. 810, pp.102-4) - "[Stars use] synth-and-strings arrangements to play up intra-band drama..." - Grade: B+ Mojo (p.88) - 3 stars out of 5 - "[F]ans of Saint Etienne and The Magnetic Fields will find much to adore." Uncut (p.104) - 3 stars out of 5 - "[T]he songs remain structured around the lover's discourse of Torquil Campbell and Amy Millan, hose wispy, feather-light voices somehow harmonise into something pointed and substantial on the title track and 'Soft Revolution'." Magnet (p.52) - Ranked #4 in Magnet's "The 20 Best Albums Of 2005" - "This Montréal band marries strings and sorrow with the delicacy of the Dears and Delgados..." From the Label
Canada is currently producing a ridiculous number of hot new bands – who will all now have to move along to make room for Montréal five piece, Stars, who release their stunning album, Set Yourself On Fire in Europe and the UK this summer. Closely aligned with the exciting Broken Social Scene collective and signed to the renowned Arts & Crafts label in the US, Stars are a classic pop outfit with a relentless armoury of tunes, king size harmonies and an infectious spirit that is undeniable. Insistent and infectious, Evan’s driving bassline and the swirls of Amy’s breathy vocals leave you reeling for more. Some bands can exist in a timeless pop bubble that bursts all other attempts at the genre. Stars are one such band. After parading their wares at SXSW and taking London by the scruff when they played their lavishly embellished, drama-filled songs of love and anguish with reckless abandon at the Buzzard, Stars are poised to go stellar with their brilliant album, Set Yourself On Fire.
I remember when this came out it was a knockout. And it's still a knockout. The orchestral arrangements, those perfectly composed touched-by-twee songs, the almost cartoonishly perfect vocals by Torquil Campbell and Amy Millan - you wouldn't know a cool teenage girl who wasn't in love with this album. It's just so brilliantly constructed, revisit it if you haven't listened to it in a while, you've probably forgotten how good it is. There are few moments on this entire album that aren't genuinely moving and gorgeous in their nostalgic teenage romanticism.
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