Stars – The Five Ghosts

Thu 23rd Sep, 2010 in Music Reviews

Stars’s 2004 album, Set Yourself On Fire, was one of those moments when myriad elements come together and fit so perfectly you wonder why it was never done before. Heartbreakingly personal lyrics, occasional dashes of cello, and above all the boy/girl harmonies of Amy Milan and Torquil Campbell led to a Juno nomination and featured spots on both The O.C. and So You Think You Can Dance in the US, going to show that beautiful songs have the capacity to break through to the mainstream, regardless of how ‘indie’ or nondescript they may be. If you haven’t heard it, you simply must listen to Your Ex-Lover Is Dead – if you don’t fall in love immediately, then I just don’t know what to say.

Sadly, however, The Five Ghosts falls short of replicating the magic. It’s certainly not for lack of effort, it’s just that the simplicity and quiet intensity that is the cornerstone of their sound is too often swamped by heavy-handed production. The first few seconds of opener Dead Hearts is vintage Stars, and all appears well until a wall of synthesizers swamps Milan’s voice during the chorus. The same can be said of I Died So I Could Haunt You, which is a beautiful, haunting (sorry) song that is genuinely moving, but the cheesiness of the synths in the chorus is impossible to ignore.

At their best, Stars are devastatingly honest and intimate, and there is plenty of that here. But there’s a couple of tracks where they are merely approximating lush and affecting, rather than actually getting there on the strength of the song. The Five Ghosts is only eleven songs long, but would have been a much stronger album were a couple of select tracks left on the cutting room floor.