I bought this album for the cover. Not kidding. Saw it and thought, “Gee, well that looks interesting.” Now for all I knew, this was some speed metal album where the singer may or may not be saying the abc’s. I lucked out though. Big time.
Stars are a band from Montreal (the current home of many a great indie rock group) and their music reflects the great white north. The opening song, “Your Ex-Lover Is Dead,” begins with a ghostly voice straight out of Aldus Huxley’s worst nightmare saying grimly, “When there is nothing left to burn/ you must set yourself on fire.” Peppy start. Then the unexpected happens. Rather than some Strung Und Dam guitar effects a la How Soon Is Now?, a series of strings and the odd French horn play a cabaret like tune. After a while a lone guitar and pounding drum pick up the melody and singer Torquil Campbell sings about the awkwardness of meeting an ex-girlfriend at a party. Guitarist Amy Millan, who shares vocal duties on the album, joins in with her own delicate voice and the song builds until both singers croon together “Live through this/ and you won’t look back.”
The album’s title track follows with a breakneck synth line and a groovy bass. “Ageless Beauty” sums up the album best though, with Millan intoning about the joys of youth over a dense guitar fuzz that sounds like Mazzy Star would have if Hope Sandoval had a boyfriend.
Youth is a consistent theme throughout the album. Songs like “Reunion”, “The First Five Times” and “Soft Revolution,” deal with the awkwardness and sadness of youth but in ways that are not dirge like. Rather, Stars are able to capture immense feelings of sadness and loss and present them in ways full of beauty and grace, so that the overall effect is not one of depressed solitude but joyful celebration.
The album ends with “Calendar Girl,” a hauntingly beautiful tale of a woman counting off the days until she dies. What should feel like the ultimate come down though is transformed when Campbell enters the song and says “Calendar girl who’s in love with the world/ stay alive” The song ends with Millan singing “I’m alive” over and over again as strings swell behind her. This reflects Stars themselves. Able to know and understand the sadness that is humanity but always with an eye to the hopeful and the sublime.
