First(ish) Listen: Stars' "The Five Ghosts"
Okay, clearly, Stars have been around way too long (and I'm too into Canadian indie pop bands such as Broken Social Scene and Arcade Fire) for this to be a First(ish) Listen of the band as a whole. But, this past weekend, while I was driving back to Cleveland after spending the weekend on a lake in Michigan, I absorbed the quintet's new album, The Five Ghosts, for the first time. I'd had it sitting next to my stereo for a while now, and I had been hearing all these great things about it and really wanted to listen to it, but for some reason, the office didn't seem like the best place to really take it in. However, driving across Indiana and Ohio with a cold front rolling through at the end of summer? That was about the best venue I could have come up with.
While I recommend the album as a whole, I've picked out four of my favorites to share here.
Kicking off the album, "Dead Hearts" is kind of a punch to the gut–but a very pretty punch. One of the best things about Stars is their ability to make gorgeous music that offsets the sad, dark or even slightly sinister lyrics. Their music is lilting, haunting and yet completely catchy. And I love the idea of broken hearts personified–drifting around town, lost and alone. The line "Oh please tell me what they looked like/Did the seem afraid of you?/They were kids that I once knew/They were kids that I once knew"? Yeah, that totally gets me every time. And Torquil Campbell and Amy Millan's vocal interplay is one of the best I've heard since Jenny Lewis sang with Ben Gibbard on the Postal Service album. Yeah, I said it.
After the splendid misery of "Dead Hearts," "Wasted Daylight" rushes in to restore some faith in romance. Plus, this is easily the best hook on the album. I was singing along before I was even through my first listen. "We Don't Want Your Body" picks up the pace and the electronics a bit, and is a fun little break in the middle of the album, while "How Much More" brings it back down a bit with some spooky gothic organ and the hard-hitting line: "My hands are tied/Because I won't say goodbye/I tried/I told you I was brave but I lied."
I'm a big believer in that the time, place and circumstance that music comes into your life will influence your feelings of devotion (or lack thereof) to it and the artist. I would make a pun here about "stars aligning," but I'll spare you. Either way, I needed this album right now, and I am loving it quite a bit. It's high on my list for best of 2010, and I think you should do yourself a favor and pick it up immediately.
