Tears and scars

>> Sharing the pain with Montreal's swoon poppers Stars and the Dears

by RUPERT BOTTENBERG

That Murray Lightburn and Torquil Campbell, frontmen for locals the Dears and T.O.-by-NYC transplants Stars respectively, share March 17 as their birthday is only the beginning of the eerie symmetry between the two bands. Double-billed at the CSE this weekend, they're both launching self-reflective EPs (with nods to each other) and they're both trapped between too-small indies that don't know when to let go and the proverbial "deep end" of big-label bullshit, with vampiric lawyers, pushy press and slack-ass middlemen buzzing around like flies. Moreover, hyper-emotive drama kings that they are, they both wear their feelings about all this on their sleeves.



Mirror: Let's start with the Dears EP, which is self-analytical right from the title, Orchestral Pop Noir Romantique.

Murray Lightburn: It's us trying to get through a really rough period of our career--

Torquil Campbell: That's interesting, that's what our EP is about--hence the title, The Comeback.

ML: But ours is a little more tongue-in-cheek. It's a self-parody, in a sense. There's the Briticisms of "Heathrow or Deathrow," obviously. Then there's the second track, which is about sticking together, about solidarity--hence the title, "Autonomy." It's about breaking off a piece of yourself to survive. It's us isolating ourselves together, disconnecting ourselves from everything going on around us in order to make this art. It comes off as just a plain old love song, when in actual fact it's more metaphoric than that.

M: The third track, "No Return," has that Gainsbourg touch to it.

ML: Oh, yeah, it's a total rip-off of "Jane B." and it's the single that we're releasing this week on MusiquePlus--the video's being edited as we speak. That's also autobiographical, but not in a personal sense. It's from a band's perspective, references to how we're dealing with the industry. There's a lot of that going on through the record.

Star treatment

M: Now on to the Stars EP, and that tune "Côte des Neiges."

TC: "Côte des Neiges" is our Dears tune! It's our parody of the Dears!

ML: And "Autonomy" is our Stars song!

TC: Quite seriously, we did the record in the dead of winter. We wanted to do an instrumental, and we'd been hanging out with the Dears, being completely inspired by the scope of what they're doing. We wanted that scope, that dynamic. We couldn't do that on the first album, because Evan Cranley and Amy Millan weren't with us. It was just me and Chris Seligman in the bedroom with a computer. It's different band now, in a way. "Côte des Neiges" is an instrumental about a snowstorm, starting softly and getting huge then fading away again. The band was making it very hard and guitary, so as usual my instinct was to throw a big, schmaltzy melody over it. It was definitely inspired by trying to soak in what we'd taken from listening to the Dears.

M: The Comeback closes on the title track--

ML: Did you know that the Dears have a song called "Theme from Comeback"?

TC: Really? We should do trade-off battle of the bands. "The Comeback" is the most autobiographical song I've ever written, I think. It's about somebody who grows up having a relationship with fame and attention that's incredibly fucked up. I was a child actor, I did a kid's movie when I was ten called The Golden Seal, which made shitloads of money. Ever since then, people would be cornering me, saying, 'You're going to be famous by the time you're 21!' Then I turned 21 and I wasn't famous. So people started saying, 'By the time you're 25!' A lot of what I write is about the emptiness of all of that. I think this whole Mariah Carey thing is one the most beautiful things that's happened in pop music. Chick's got the number-1 single in America and she's in a mental hospital.

Strength through vulnerability

M: So, uh, do either of you guys have any good news, besides the existence of the EPs themselves?

ML: That is the good news. The good news is that we can still make art, and nobody can take that away from us! Well, actually, they sort of can. But nothing beats that moment when you pop in a fresh recording, listen to it and think, we just made this. There's nothing better than that.

TC: I think what the people in the Dears and Stars have in common is a belief in strength through vulnerability. People aren't doing that anymore. There was a time when getting your cock out as a musician meant getting your fucking self out, in every facet, not just in one kind of attitude, but in a way that made you look like a fallible, strange, complex person. I think, in our own ways, we're both trying to do that exact same thing. Plus, uh, me and Murray listen to the same albums a lot.

At Centro Social Español on Saturday, Aug. 18, 9pm, $10