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Flesh and blood and tin
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“Are you a sad robot?” is the question posed by the latest piece of music by Stars. The imagery that accompanies the Sad Robots EP is as romantically inclined as ever, for a band whose lyrics, music and artwork has always championed the pinning of hearts to sleeves. This time, it’s a drawing of a Victorian damsel on a ship’s deck, and a pumping human heart. But the presence of a vacillating tin man, and mechanical gears where flesh and blood should be, implies a new angle on the band’s preoccupation with passion. “Are you unable to express this feeling that’s inside of you?” asks Stars bassist and co-composer Evan Cranley, by way of elaboration. “Do you feel that you’re a shell that can’t love or hate, that you’re trapped in emotional purgatory?” In the age of online socializing, simulated companionship, friendship and love, emotional detachment is rampant, a plague on modern romance. Stars tackle these issues over six beautiful songs, including a live rendition of “Going Going Gone” from their debut LP, 2001’s Nightsongs. Its inclusion is fitting, given that the EP—following the relatively rock In Our Bedroom After the War LP—marks a return to the band’s electro-pop roots. “We almost wanted to regress, to explore our musical subtleties again,” Cranley explains. “When we were coming up with this music, our drummer [Pat McGee] used the term ‘sad robot,’ saying he wanted something that sounded cold and removed and emotionless, but still providing a constant beat. Melancholy digital, that’s what we were going for.” Despite pushing synths and beats to the forefront, the EP’s scales still tip towards human warmth, with the sultry voices of singer-lyricists Torquil Campbell and Amy Millan accompanied by earthy piano and celestial guitar, expressing confused emotions via appropriately heart-wrenching melodies. Equally fitting is the EP’s online exclusivity, independent of Stars’ label, Arts & Crafts (go to sadrobots.ca to buy it). The project was turned around in six weeks, giving the band fresh material to tour with, which “recharged everyone’s batteries,” according to Cranley. After this week’s regional mini-tour and dates across the Pacific in the new year, the band members will attend to side projects—Millan’s second solo LP, the third by Campbell’s band Memphis, something “on the sly” by keyboardist Chris Seligman and another record by Broken Social Scene, featuring Cranley and Millan—and take their sweet time conceiving the next LP, their fifth. “I like the idea of reinvention,” says Cranley. “That’s how bands can stay creative, by morphing with every record. There could be one more record or there could be another five—I think the band’s at the most critical point that it ever has been.” Not as critical, perhaps, as that of Coldplay, whose singer and enfant terrible Chris Martin, 31, recently stated that musicians should retire at age 33. “That really got me fired up,” says Cranley. “That was so dark. So dark. When I was 21, I thought that being 30 or 35 was old, but there’s so much music to be made. We actually just opened up for Coldplay at the Scotiabank Place in Ottawa, which was fun, they were nice, but a couple of weeks later, that quote came out—we’re in our mid-30s, so maybe he saw our set and said, ‘That’s it, I don’t wanna be those guys!’” WITH GENTLEMAN REG AT METROPOLIS |
