- HEART
Many albums have dazzled fans throughout time and overspilled their proverbial hearts. Most of us know that a heart is not only the organ which sustains a human being's life, but also the poetic centre of all that enables one to love, hate, and experience a wide array of human emotions. Provided that we're not psycho of course, although psychos still feel things and these things come from the poetic heart...they're just not really nice things.
You can tell, for example, that Van Morrison's very personal song "TB Sheets" is straight from the heart. Listening to this heartbreaking song about Morrison's dying friend, you can practically hear Morrison's heart breaking in half, and understand his subsequent breakdown in the studio afterward.
Montreal's Stars declare their intentions right at the get-go on "Heart", their second full length player. At the very beginning of track one we hear an answering machine with each member of the group stating their name and assuring listeners "this is my heart". The record has received big time hype in indie circles since its release in Canada earlier this year. What attracted me was the band's influences, which are pretty straightforward: New Order, Smiths, Pet Shop Boys - all that was good about the 1980s I suppose.
For an album which is so endeared among indie hipsters, it is very commercial sounding, but the question is, commercial for what era? Certainly, I could picture any one of these songs alongside Shania or Michelle Branch on present radio stations had today's programmers any imagination, but I could also hear these songs blaring out of the radio circa 1988 alongside New Order and Depeche Mode.
The group's songwriting is collective, and member Torquil Campbell stated in one recent interview that what he admired most about old and new incarnations of New Order was their tendency to blend the organic and the electronic, and this is totally evident in Stars' sound as well. Track number one "What The Snowman Learned About Love" has a soothing acoustic guitar over an electro beat which leads into the bouncy second track "Elevator Love Letter". It's an irresistable track and single. A short story of loneliness at work? It certainly seems so with the sharp lyrics "my office glows/all night long/it's a nuclear show/when the stars are gone/elevator...elevator take me home." A love song to an elevator...ahh..now there's something you don't hear every day. So as Bryan Ferry sang "love is the drug" here, but on this album it is not just the drug...it's the concept...even if it involves characters singing love songs to inanimate objects such as elevators.
What is most apparent is that this is a modern concept album revealing conditional and unconditional love in all its beautiful and ugly forms. Kind of like a Woody Allen film that displays sudden infidelities and individual insecurities all through a darkly humourous sheen. The album for the most part is optimistic but prefers to shine an objective light on its characters.
Vocalist Amy Millan is a complete darling with an utterly heart melting voice. She's like the girl that all the boys fall in love with in the 7th grade and breaks their hearts forever. It's no secret that I bought this album with dear old Amy in mind, as she was an acclaimed but somewhat obscure singer/songwriter in her own right before joining the group, and fits perfectly into this electro pop stew.
So is the record worth all the hype? I certainly think so. I must admit however that the air of unflinching optimism gets cloying near the end, but perhaps that's because we live in ultra-ironic cynical times and I'm finding that hard to shake. But the Stars deserve to break the mainstream because this is the kind of pop that is screaming for mainstream attention right now: smart, catchy, intelligent songs which linger in your mind long after the record is over.
Other highlights include the Delgados-style boy/girl vocals of the title track "Heart" and the song "Death to Death" in which Amy declares "I am destroyer I am lover" meaning I suppose that one love (or lust) can cancel and destroy another. "Life Effect", a lament about the perils of long distance phone love, is my second favourite song on the record. In the verse parts it contains a spunky Sterolab style bassline and St. Etienne type melody in the chorus. Obviously the group have been influenced by both bands.
It's rare to find a concept album these days, at least outside of prog rock circles, let alone one so direct and universally satisfying. For more info on the group, check out www.starsdeluxe.net.
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