2010 was certainly the “Year of the Fan” for Montreal-based band Stars, as their focus over the past year has been reconnecting with their fan base. From playing shows featuring their entire new album The Five Ghosts, a website overhaul intent on involving listeners and concert-goers in discussion, a deluxe fan edition of Ghosts and impassioned, heartfelt tours showed Stars’ light blazing greater than ever. Often times bands lose steam after a year of promoting an album, tapering off at the end from the weariness of touring and media appearances, but this was not the case as Stars winded up their last tour to support Ghosts in November. Instead, they burst with energy and ended the era on a serious high note.
Their last full-length studio output was 2007’s uneven yet strangely affecting concept album, In Our Bedroom After the War, a record that delivered some of Stars’ best songs (“Take Me To The Riot,” “Bitches in Tokyo” and “The Night Starts Here,” for example) but also came across as somewhat cold and removed. When it was announced in early 2010 that their next record would again be a concept album, many were worried that the band had truly jumped the shark. They’ve always been known for a healthy relationship with melodrama, but two back-to-back concept albums can often be too much for a fan base to digest.
Released in May, The Five Ghosts is a wholly different experience than its predecessor. It opens with the incredibly strong song “Dead Hearts,” which sounds exactly like one from the band’s best album, Set Yourself on Fire (2005). The next track is single “Wasted Daylight,” a shimmery, joyful (and danceable!) track about spending all day in bed with a lover. Essentially, The Five Ghosts is both a return to form (those similarities to Set Yourself on Fire are obviously no accident) and also a vindication of the concept album’s power. Whereas Bedroom was aloof, Ghosts is immediate, personal and vulnerable. It’s Torquil Campbell’s penchant for grandeur at its best, buffeted by Amy Millan’s sensual delivery and vocal warmth.
In May, Stars launched a North American tour to support the release of The Five Ghosts where each night they played the album in its entirety as the first set, and then returned after an intermission for a fan-oriented second set and encore. These shows were at fairly intimate venues (I saw them at SF’s Independent), and the majority of the tour sold out. For many who hadn’t heard the new songs, it was a surreal experience to take in Ghosts with hundreds of other people, but the pulse of the shows was so powerful and full of energy that you dove into the wreck and joined the throngs of people dancing to the newest batch of darkly powerful Stars songs that vacillated between the treacherous nature of relationships and one’s surrender to bliss despite life’s turmoil. The shows were a great success, and the band seemed exceptionally grateful for the continued support.
The Fall 2010 Tour was Stars’ last push to support Ghosts (Amy Millan was four months pregnant at the beginning of the tour), and they abandoned the two-set-plus-encore format in favor of the traditional set-plus-encore rock format. It was clear from the beginning of the show, however, that regardless of the set shift, the band had lost nothing in energy or passion; rather, the whole show seemed much more urgent and emotional than those of the summer tour. The first four songs of the night seemed slightly awkward, though. “He Dreams He’s Awake” was an excellent opener, full of the dramatic build-to-climax and soaring high notes for which Stars is known, but the follow ups of “The Passenger” and “How Much More” seemed out of place. But as soon as the band launched into “Wasted Daylight,” it became a night of remarkably potent song after another.
The real highlight of the night came in the middle of the main set, when the band exited except for Amy Millan and bassist Evan Cranely, who performed a flawless acoustic take on their huge hit “Ageless Beauty” from Set Yourself on Fire. The performance came out of nowhere—the band seemed to be on a roll with digging into their back catalog, and then everything stopped for four minutes while Millan delivered one of the most touching moments of any concert I’ve seen in 2010. On record, the song opens with huge electric guitars and an almost frantic bass line. Cranely, on acoustic guitar, provided the perfectly quiet backdrop for Millan’s commanding vocal performance, exposing the exquisiteness of the song underneath. Millan has never had a huge voice in the traditional sense, but her delivery is so ardent and emotionally charged that her vocals invade your soul and fills all spaces of your mind. To see her song so nakedly performed seemed like we were being let in on a secret behind the band we know as Stars—like hearing an artist’s demo when their songs are merely zygotes. It was an incredibly touching moment in a show of many.
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Stars seem to get a pretty tough rap these days in the music scene, but it’s because they’re beginning to refuse to give in to the indie zeitgeist. In general, there has been a dramatic shift away from the dramatic and the personal, favoring emotionally removed minimalism over heart-on-your-sleeve songwriting. Try as he might, Torq Campbell just does not succeed in writing songs that stray from his center of gravity—the tortured lover, ever-the-romantic and searching for meaning and bliss in love and life. While Stars flirted in 2006 and 2007 with a more aloof approach (see the remix album and half of In Our Bedroom after the War), it just did not pan out for them, so to see their return to form with The Five Ghosts is heart-warming and reassuring.
It’s hard to encapsulate the show except to say that it was stunning. Stars have regained their mojo, and to see them end this era with such a brilliant show was nothing short of inspiring. The fantastic light display was spot-on, the band was tighter than ever, and Campbell and Millan radiated with joy and passion. Rarely have I seen so many hipsters dance and shout out lyrics with glee and abandon. You couldn’t resist the urge to wear your heart on your sleeve—a clear indication of the powerful bond between Stars and their fans. After their rapturous encore, you really did believe it when Campbell closed out the show saying: “We are Stars…. And so are you.”
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Setlist:
He Dreams He’s Awake, Elevator Love Letter, The Passenger, How Much More, Wasted Daylight, Time Can Never Kill The True Heart, Bitches in Tokyo, Undertow, The Comeback, Ageless Beauty (Acoustic), The Woods, Dead Hearts, Take Me to the Riot, We Don’t Want Your Body, Fixed, Set Yourself on Fire, Your Ex-Lover is Dead, One More Night
Encore:
Celebration Guns, I Died So I Could Haunt You, Reunion, Midnight Coward, Soft Revolution, Changes
