Losing the battle,
winning the war

>> In the skirmishes between bitter
and sweet, personal and political, and
popcraft and punk ethos, Montreal’s soft revolutionaries Stars prevail

SWEET DEFEAT: Stars

by LORRAINE CARPENTER

“The sky wasn’t black with gunsmoke anymore—it was just nighttime—and those tiny glimmers above us weren’t fighter jets. I was sure of it. They were standing still, sending us a message of light from miles and miles away. Stars.”

So ends the one-page narrative in the liner notes for In Our Bedroom After the War, written by Daniel Handler, aka children’s writer Lemony Snicket, a fan and friend of the band. Victory is declared in a war that literally hits home, not one you can shut out with the flick of a TV remote, and all five members of Montreal’s Stars—Torquil Campbell (voice), Evan Cranley (bass), Pat McGee (drums), Amy Millan (voice, guitar) and Chris Seligman (keyboards)—arrive in a car that runs on Pernod to take the narrator out to celebrate, as zoo animals roam the bombed-out streets and the popular kids from high school destroy some of Stars’ favourite old records (by Saint Etienne, Scritti Politti, Prince, Dusty Springfield and New Order). It’s a fairy tale, a sci-fi story and, most importantly, a dream that reflects the band’s post-war reverie.

“What’s so beautiful about it is that it’s a fantasy world where war is finished, and that’s what we need to start sending out,” says Millan. The title of the band’s fourth album was inspired by John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s “War is over (if you want it)” campaign during the Vietnam War, which produced billboards, posters and the song “Happy Christmas, War Is Over.”

Campbell has mused over the prophetic prospects of their latest title, given the unsettling connection between their last one, 2004’s Set Yourself on Fire, and the suicide attack on the Glasgow airport last summer; when one of the men’s bombs failed to detonate, he attempted self-immolation, only to be fought and extinguished by a policeman whose name happened to be Torquil Campbell.

But there are few uplifting slogans elsewhere on the album, which finds Millan and Campbell once again wallowing in heartbreak, violence, sleaze and melancholy.

“There’s a lot of darkness on this record,” says Millan. “Campbell is very influenced by death—he’s always been a very dark person—and my lyric writing is about the silent darkness within relationships. But it’s ultimately a beautiful, positive thing. ‘Take Me to the Riot’ is about two drug dealers who are completely fucked up on crack, but they’re in love. At the end of the day, they have each other. And ‘Barricade’—people who don’t listen to the lyrics think it’s about politics, but it’s about violent soccer hooligans and gay sex!

“People could hear [our music] and say, ‘That’s too sweet and poppy,’” she says, “but if you really listen, you can always find the filth that’s underneath it, which is probably what every single member of this band is attracted to about each other and the music that we write together.”

Too pop or not too pop

At some point in the ’70s, “pop” was reduced to an insult for newly indoctrinated punks. The term was reclaimed in the U.K. once Britpop rolled around, but grunge was king in North America, where religiously small-time, ironically detached cool kids seemed to dominate the indie rock world. Artists, critics and fans alike continued to equate the pop aesthetic with the pop machine, sometimes dismissing anything with a catchy chorus and fancy haircut as illegitimate pandering. (On a related topic, read Campbell’s recent rant about blog criticism on MySpace, in response to a review of the new album on Pitchfork.)

But Britpop (and synthpop) clearly had a lasting effect on the Canadian kids who went on to form Stars and their extended family—the Dears, Metric, Broken Social Scene (of which Millan and Cranley are members)—as well as their real family; Chris Seligman’s brother Dan, after managing Stars for several years, co-founded the Pop Montreal music festival in 2002, helping to cement “pop” as a credible musical term, and restore its broad definition on this side of the Atlantic.

Stars always aspired to pop survival more than pop stardom, but stylistically, chart-topping ’80s acts such as New Order and the Smiths were their heroes from the beginning. Back in 1999, childhood friends Campbell and Seligman formed the band in New York City, later enlisting Cranley and Millan, as well as releasing their debut album, Nightsongs, in 2000. The Comeback EP followed in 2001, by which time the band had relocated to Canada, choosing Montreal over their native Toronto. Following the release of their first great album, Heart, the band began to tour in earnest, put synthetic beats on the backburner and promoted McGee from live drummer to full-time band member and co-songwriter.

“The music is a springboard for what is created with the lyrics,” says Millan. “If you look at a song like ‘Personal,’ the underlying piano of that song is gorgeous, but at the same time, it’s heartbreaking and a little creepy, and that’s the kind of thing that sparks the lyrics.”

Where the heart is

The band recorded this album in Vancouver’s Warehouse, a state-of-the-art studio owned by, ahem, Bryan Adams. But, as is usually the case, the writing happened here in Montreal.

“Breakglass was just such a great environment, and Jace [Lasek, of Besnard Lakes], who runs the studio, definitely had an influence on our demos, he had a lot of input,” says Millan, who preferred the spacious Mile-End studio to the site of their last writing session, a house in North Hatley, QC, in deep winter. “It was nice to be in our own community, literally 10 minutes from home by bike. With my solo project, everybody’s like, ‘You should go to Nashville’ and I’m like, ‘I don’t wanna go to Nashville, I wanna go around the corner from my house!’”

Millan’s debut solo album was released last year, as was Campbell’s second record with collaborator Chris Dumont (as Memphis). They’re both working towards their next records for these side projects, which not only provide alternative artistic outlets, but make them more appreciative of their primary gig.

“Having to go out there every night and play an hour-and-a-half-long show yourself, you realize how much fun it is to have somebody else on stage singing with you. We improved as singers because we had that work to do, and then, when we came back together, we were just so happy to have each other to lean on. It’s like going on vacation.”

Victory and loss

“Vive le revolution doux! We lost, but that was the plan…and it was a beautiful war...xoxo Stars”

That’s the last line on the thank-you page for In Our Bedroom After the War. But whereas the titular war is the kind fought with artillery, aircraft, grenades and human bodies, the soft revolution was an uprising of love, willpower and Velvet Underground tunes—at least that’s how Campbell depicted the battle in “The Soft Revolution,” a song from Set Yourself on Fire. The phrase first appeared in the liner notes for Heart, in reference to the wave of indie pop bands emerging from Montreal and Toronto, but took on a different tone once Stars, Metric, the Dears and, more recently, Arcade Fire, began voicing dissent against the invasion and occupation of Iraq (among other genius Bush endeavours), politicizing both their lyrics and their interviews. As Emily Haines recently sang in Metric’s “Monster Hospital,” they “fought the war and the war won.” That was inevitable. But less so was the international embrace of Canada’s indie pop crop. The original soft revolution, the strictly musical one, is a success.

“It’s one of the most memorable tours I’ve ever done,” says Millan, who spoke to the Mirror by phone from Winnipeg, near the end of a six-week North American trek—after the holidays, they’ll attend to the rest of the world, straight through to next autumn.

“You can really sense a step forward with the amount of work that we’ve put into it for the past six years. It feels like we’ve finally made headway.”

In Vancouver, where Stars played a secret MySpace show to 200 fans and headlined the 1,000-capacity Commodore Ballroom in one day, the crowds were so loud that Campbell temporarily lost his hearing.

“It was crazy,” says Millan, “crazy times! But, living as an artist, you always have to be aware that there’s gonna be ups and downs. That’s why we have to acknowledge when things are going well. It’s a lot easier to be negative, but it’s just as important to recognize good times, because nothing lasts forever.”

At le National on Friday, Nov. 30 with Pony Up and
Saturday, Dec. 1 with Jade McNelis, 8 p.m., $22.50