Stars

In Our Bedroom After the War, the name of Stars’ fourth, newest – and, without question, best – full-length album, is mysterious, grand, and multifaceted. Set Yourself on Fire, Stars’ previous studio album, provided the Montreal-spawned quintet with their international breakthrough, five years after the band was first hatched by the duo of Campbell and keyboardist Chris Seligman while they were living near-penniless in New York City. Now gold certified in Canada, Fire proved so enduringly popular in so many parts of the world that the band left on tour following its 2004 release and barely stopped for the next two years. Suddenly, this most sophisticated of pop groups was required to adapt to the life of something its members never expected to become: road warriors.

Yet while that life brought about moments of great personal turbulence amongst the band, it also made Stars – which had traditionally spent long stretches apart between albums – a lithe, artful fighting unit. You can now hear that extraordinary evolution all over Bedroom; the result, says bassist and guitarist Evan Cranley, who co-writes most of Stars’ music with Seligman, of “a lot of natural, off-the-cuff playing – not erasing every single mistake, trying to keep the most beautiful mistakes possible.”

Stars will perform on Saturday September 8th 2007 at Osheaga.

www.arts-crafts.ca/stars/