An acquaintance of mine once insisted she didn’t “get” Stars. Namely, why two vocalists she insisted weren’t that talented were pushed so prominently forward in the mix on their records, why the songs were always centered around some kind of melodramatic romanticism.
But it’s those two elements that are so central to what makes Stars Stars. It also serves to both elevate their new album, the Five Ghosts, and simultaneously drag it down.
It takes only a cursory listen to any Stars song to realize that, yes, Amy Milan and Torquil Campbell are not the most showy singers; they don’t have Roy Orbison’s range (a suspected four octaves; respect) or Peabo Bryson’s bombast (huh?) or Susan Boyle’s dynamism (what?). Their performances are generally breathy, low-key, sometimes thin, all but whispers. But it’s less the singing than the devastating melodies those voices carry across to the listener that really count.
The one-two punch of “Dead Hearts” and “Wasted Daylight” is without a doubt the strongest album opening the band has ever had in that respect. Where other records have begun with drawn-out, meandering introductory pieces the Five Ghosts cuts right to the chase with one of the most memorable vocal melodies the group has ever produced. “Wasted Daylight,” one of the album’s more propulsive, building musical numbers is also boosted by a lilting and plaintive vocal melody. While much of the album doesn’t share the same lightness or brightness, the melodies remain the most prominent feature of Stars’ work.
And say what you will about the weight and gravitas of their voices, but Milan and Campbell have rarely sounded as versatile and, well, GOOD before. Their parts are clear, impassioned, and distinct and they continue to reach a new plateau every time out.
But it’s the other half of the songwriting equation where this album fails to capture my imagination. While the band did strike it big with “Your Ex-Lover Is Dead” (their most organic, orchestral songs to date) the vast majority of their career outside of the Set Yourself On Fire album has been based in electronic and keyboard sounds. The Five Ghosts might be their most thoroughly synthesized album since their earliest EPs, a fact which I’m not really that fond of. A band with this much pomp and drama, both lyrically and musically, comes across as seriously maudlin over the course of 40 chilly minutes of down-beat keyboards. I’m sure a lot of it has to do with personal preference, though; to me heartbreak is so much more tangible on a song like “Personal” (from the previous LP, In Our Bedroom After The War) that’s built around guitar and piano than the distant drum machining and swirling, atmospheric synths of a track like “He Dreams He’s Awake.” Again, maybe that’s just me.
Tonally this album once again lays the melodrama on pretty thick. Drama is a central tenant to what makes this band tick, but the rays of sunshine are surprisingly few and far between. In a recent interview Campbell told Exclaim! he always saw Stars as a band that makes “sad dance music” and that’s definitely true here. But there is virtually nothing uplifting, nothing in the vein of a “Look Up,” “Take Me To The Riot,” or “Ageless Beauty.” Everything here is death, aversion to change, zombies (unless I’m reading something into “Dead Hearts” that isn’t there), unappealing potential paramours, and fistfights between lovers. The final coda of the album declares, “Winter lives in my bones/it’s all I’ve ever known.” That seems like an all too fitting way to end this record.
I suppose it was just a matter of time until Stars let me down. The trilogy of their last several full-length albums has been too perfect; the other shoe had to drop sooner or later. The first half of the Five Ghosts is very good, and “Changes” is a pleasant surprise tucked into the latter half. But the majority of this album feels too cold, too distant. It’s a moody piece of work that is either not fitting my current frame of mind or is just a little too detached and depressing. I’m still not entirely certain.
Pick up the Five Ghosts in every conceivable format from the band’s web store. They’re also touring for pretty much the rest of the year, but (as they did earlier) they appear to be skipping Saskatchewan entirely.
I’ve been packing my life up for the last two days in anticipation of moving to Toronto for good. I’ve been in the city off and on for the last two weeks, working at a new job and trying to find an apartment.
I spent one week on the couch of a friend whose phone signal and Internet connection were being blocked or scrambled because she lived so near the site of the G20 summit fence. Early one morning last week, there were shots fired in her normally touristy neighbourhood in the theatre district. When I walked home from my office on King Street, I encountered police patrolling in pairs on every block. They were friendly and calm, but their presence was still unnerving. In the end, her apartment on Wellington and John became completely inaccessible and she escaped back to Saskatchewan for a week, desperate to avoid whatever was about to happen.
The weekend before that, it felt like the city was primed and humming. AT NXNE concerts, people talked about the fences, the barricade, the police and what exactly was going to happen. There was a free Iggy Pop concert at Yonge and Dundas Square that Saturday. Punks, cops, large crowds and free entrance to see righteous music. A surefire recipe for chaos. But everything went off without a hitch. Then there were the Much Music Video Awards. I doubt two more different worlds exist than a street walkin’ cheetah preaching raw power with a heart full of napalm and loyal Justin Bieber fans sleeping on the sidewalk to get tickets to see their fave-o-rite teen heartthrob. But those worlds did co-exist and the fans who spilled out into the street at the corner of Queen and John for the MMVAs had no idea that in a few days, the Starbucks across from Much Music headquarters would be boarding up smashed windows.
For the next week, I surfed the couch of a friend living near Bathurst and Bloor. Sitting at my firend’s kitchen table, combing craigslist for an apartment, I felt the ground shake, looked out the window and saw the building next door swaying. Within minutes, facebook and twitter were buzzing with information about the earthquake that had gently rumbled southern Ontario and Quebec. Relief flooded through me. Because for one brief second I thought “Oh hell. Somebody blew something up.”
I spent the last week in Toronto criss-crossing the city on public transit looking for an apartment. It was hot and I’d been living out of a backpack working a new shift for two weeks, so barricades and transit delays because of security checks (or something equally vague) made me extra irritable. I had no luck and Thursday, I headed back to Guelph.
The last few days have been a blur of packing tape, newspaper and boxes. But in between, I’ve taken periodic breaks to find that the Black Bloc was in town Saturday, flipping and burning police cars, smashing the windows of businesses and generally being a-holes. And the police stood there in their riot gear and let it happen. Cameras rolled to catch the action and it was all over the news: ‘Thugs’ justify the $1-billion price tag for G20 security.
Now, I am not pro-smashing and burning things, however, it should be noted that police cars and storefronts are things. They are not human beings.
And I hate to say it, but it’s hard to not want to smash something when you see a video like this:
Meghann Millard is a friend. She works at Unspace, a programming company with offices on Queen Street West. She took this video earlier today and posted a shorter version of it on youtube. Within minutes, I saw it on twitter and facebook feeds of several friends of mine who don’t know Meghann.
A few hours later, no less an Internet celebrity and arbiter of that which is worthy to tweet about than Roger Ebert retweeted Meghann’s video to the world. His tweet was short and to the point: “Sometimes one video can summarize the whole story.”
The official response to this video and other reports at the scene on Queen and Spadina from the police was that they charged the crowd because they suspected members of the Black Bloc were in it. I know I’m supposed to be impartial and everything, but what a load of shit.
It strikes me as overwhelmingly sad that people can’t even get together and sing the stupid national anthem. We’re so lame that we don’t even rally around a protest song. We just sing the anthem because come on! We’re in Canada! We don’t have riot police who will charge you when you finish singing a song about how strong and free your country is!
But apparently we do. Apparently, we’re not as free as we think we are.
Reports from the Toronto Star’s G20 Blog indicate that most protesters who were arrested had no idea what they were being charged with, weren’t allowed to use the bathroom, couldn’t make phone calls and weren’t given access to a lawyer. Some claimed they weren’t even part of the protest and got caught up in the crowd while walking down the street. Then, as quickly as they had been arrested, they were let go and told all charges had been dropped. Your rights mean nothing. NOTHING.
Somewhere in all this, the word anarchist somehow came to mean criminal. The vandalism and violence were ascribed to all protesters. And people I formerly respected wondered aloud why protesters who got on the news didn’t spend their precious few seconds of airtime condemning violence and vandalism. Is it their job to condemn that? Some of them did anyway and good for them. But the security fence was up long before protesters took to the streets, so that’s just chicken and egg semantics and I have to ask: If the government knew this was going to happen, (To the tune of putting up a fence and hiring a billion dollars worth of extra police and actually changing my rights) why would they host this summit in Toronto at all? Especially if, as Rick Salutin put it, they had already decided to do nothing. Can’t you do nothing somewhere else? No? Really? You have to have dinner and glad-hand world leaders on top of the CN Tower? There’s a penis joke in there somewhere.
The Globe recently published another Salutin column entitled “The Man Who Came To Dinner” in which he writes:
“What is the sign of the breakdown in the relationship? Police everywhere, to protect the governors from the people. That’s how it looks. I’m not saying that’s what it is, yet. But it’s amazing that they don’t even react to the optics of the situation: i.e. a temporary police state. To us onlookers, it’s the experience of being disenfranchised. You don’t count, you suddenly have no rights. You can’t park in your spot or take your kids to school. No one asked us, at most they gathered us and told us. It’s what you feel when you’re arrested: that it’s a free country until they decide it’s not.”
I guess what frustrates me the most about this is how are you supposed to obey the law and have a peaceful protest when SURPRISE! We gave the police extra powers we didn’t tell anybody about and you’re breaking the new law we made up for the occasion, so you’re arrested! Oh yeah. That’s the Public Works Protection Act. I ask you, how can protesters be expected to follow a law that they don’t know exists? There is a real feeling of “If only everyone who do what they’re told! Act the right way and don’t make a scene and maybe then we can have our rights back!” Except that’s not how rights work.
All this coupled with the astounding revelations by some friends and colleagues that they think protesters should just get jobs and take showers (or worse, be shot on site by police) has left me extremely angry.
Without protesters, I would not be able to vote. Without protesters, Barack Obama would have spent his life in segregation, not on the road to the White House. There are countless other examples, but who cares? Sorry Martin Luther King. I know you had a dream and everything, but too bad. GET A JOB, DOUCHEBAG!
You can disagree with their methods and you can dislike their politics, but nobody can ever say that protest isn’t a valid for of expression that occasionally serves an incredibly important role in society. If you don’t believe that, then I guess I feel sorry for you. You must lead a very ignorant life.
I’m heading back to Toronto in a few short hours to find a place to live once and for all.
I have a feeling that the city will look like nothing much happened over the weekend. A few broken windows. Some scorch marks here and there. But it’s not like something more important was damaged. It’s not like the best part of the city was held hostage for almost a week with barricades and fences. It’s not like I won’t be able to look at a cop without wondering “Were you one of the ones who raised a baton to a protester?” It’s not like I’m moving to a city where people can’t gather on a public street and sing about true patriot love without being charged by riot police.
But you can’t spell patriot without riot, so I guess we’re out of luck.
Ah, the stop-gap EP. Such a convenient way for a band to capitalize on some momentum, to strike while the iron is hot and keep material flowing to an expanding audience.
This is one of those.
You’ll recall I named the Wheat Pool’s Hauntario my favourite album of 2009, and for good reason. It’s a prairie rock/alt-country masterpiece that is fraught with tension and emotion, an impeccably-performed set of intricately-arranged songs that resonate on every wavelength. It’s just so good, you guys.
Some of that magic crosses over to this EP, thanks to the fact that most of these tracks were recorded during the album sessions. In fact, one of the highlights is an alternate version of Hauntario standout “Evangeline” that strips away all of the tension and bombastic instrumentation save a slowly-plucked acoustic guitar and the Angus brothers’ harmonies. It wisely runs little more than half the length of the LP version, serving as a minimal yet ghostly bit of storytelling.
Alternate versions are apparently something the Wheat Pool toyed with at length while recording the LP. You’ll recall the rollicking “Too Far Apart” was reprised as the much quieter, more contemplative, more mournful “Two Far Apart” to end Hauntario. While that was absolutely the right call they apparently dropped the track “Edith Cavell” to do it. Its jaunty acoustic strumming and far-off slide guitar recall the LP’s high-water mark, “Italy,” but leaving it off the album proper was probably the right decision; it’s brevity and preciousness likely would have contrasted with the rest of the record.
The linchpin for the release is a cover of Neil Young’s “Helpless.” Young is obviously the band’s chief influence and the track has been a popular live staple for the group, according to the EP’s one-sheet anyway. I suppose I see the logic to that, as they do a pretty terrific job with it, keeping it fairly close to Young’s original version with just the right mix of rock guitar leads, keyboard, and slide guitar. The brothers’ distinctive harmonies also help make it distinct. While the track may have been the impetus for the EP’s entire creation, including two different mixes seems superfluous and unnecessary; maybe I’m just too Canadian, but it seems like we’ve all heard this song enough already. I don’t think it will have the same kind of appeal over time as the other numbers.
Again, this is a stop-gap release; it’s only a couple of original songs, they’re all leftovers, and as such they only possess a microcosm of the magic that made Hauntario so perfect. Regardless, I’ve only had these songs for a day and a half and I am so grateful for it. If you haven’t been exposed to this band yet, $3.99 is a very small price to pay for your first taste of one of Canada’s great young bands.
Being a musician is an impossible, thankless task. Find popularity with a certain sound or element and you’re set for a while, at least; but after that it’s often a case of “damned if you do, damned if you don’t.” If you deviate from what gained you approval from your fans then you risk alienating your base, but if you stick with what you know works then you chance your sound getting stale and people becoming bored with you.
Against Me! has been dancing along the edge of that particular razor blade for the entirety of its career. Forged in the “no sell-outs allowed” Florida folk-punk scene, they’ve been dogged by massive criticism every time they try to grow their band, audience, or sound. They were called sell-outs when they added electric guitars on Reinventing Axl Rose; they got their tires slashed for signing to Fat Wreck Chords; and the punk world more or less imploded when they signed to a major label (after releasing a DVD documentary about being courted by major labels that ended with them asserting it would essentially never happen). Having some significant success with their first major label release put them in an even more awkward position; what’s the next brass ring to grab for?
The immediate answer is arenas. It’s clear band leader Tom Gabel wants to make the group as big as possible, but for the first time in his career there seems to be some tangible growing pains involved in the process. Listening to White Crosses I feel like I’m being pulled in two different directions: on one side is the Gabel that has made no bones about his ambition to play music for a living and actually make some real money doing it and on the other is the now-antiquated vision of the young firebrand whose frenzied, acoustic-based folk-punk lit the underground on fire with scathing songs made of napalm, piss, and vinegar.
Gabel isn’t completely de-clawed on this record, but he’s definitely had his nails trimmed. He sets his sights most fiercely on himself on first single, “I Was A Teenage Anarchist,” an admission that his earlier years spent rabble-rousing in frustrated ideology were all but wasted. “High-Pressure Low” casts the United States’ current hopeless (in Gabel’s opinion), fractured state against that of the 1960’s, drawing comparisons between the Iraq and Afghanistan wars with the Bay of Pigs and, presumably, Vietnam. He outlines the campaign of misinformation that surrounded that incident and then-Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara’s eventual realization that, in Gabel’s words, “there was a mistake in going to war without first asking all the questions.” The obvious parallel is the insistence of the Bush administration that WMD’s were all over Iraq; to say the least, Gabel is concerned that his country is mired in dark times parallel to those that followed the Bay of Pigs.
For me this track might be the most striking on the album, if only for what it represents. Lyrically it serves as a bridge between what Against Me! used to be and their current arena-punk ambitions. While several songs on this album lead up to toothless sloganeering (”I have no judgement for you/come on and ache with me” on the track that follows it; the refrain of “White crosses on church lawns/I want to smash them all” on the opening cut is thrown out to the listener without giving the context: a church Gabel lives near that displays a white cross for every fetus estimated to be aborted in a day throughout the U.S.) this is a song that has some genuine thought behind it, but unfortunately it’s also one of the most bland musically they’ve produced. It’s a very pop-rock/radio rock backing track, years and miles away from the furious strumming of Reinventing Axl Rose. It’s one of several arching volleys for wider appeal offered up here.
Another highlight is the next track, “Ache With Me.” While the chorus seems kind of like a cop-out from an aging punk rocker, it’s musically brilliant. Gabel channels every Dylan-ism he’s ever felt (and there have been many) and produces an acoustic track equally as engaging as the cover of “Wagon Wheels” he recorded for a compilation five or six years ago, which has long been one of my absolute favourite Against Me! numbers. Better, perhaps, as the rest of the band offers some understated accompaniment that outlines the desperation of the lyric. The same goes for the mid-tempo closer, “Bamboo Bones.” Limber guitar lines and an inspirational one-line chorus, combined with one of Gabel’s most vivid vocal performances to date, close out the album proper in fine fashion. Also a treat is the splashy cymbal work from Hot Water Music drummer George Rebelo, an incredibly talented player who too often fades into the background without showing what he’s really capable of.
From there things sort of dwindle. “The Shame” is a very moving track lyrically, an ode do a dead lover that also sees Gabel condemn himself for his inability to cope with loss. The words and vocals are plainly-stated but weighty in a way few musicians are capable of, which makes it kind of a shame that the music is little more than the Springsteen-aping that has become so prevalent in a lot of independent music of late. “Breaking Up” comes off as a rote number as uninspired as its title, likely the most overt attempt to get the band onto teenager’s mix tapes. I’m not saying Gabel can’t or shouldn’t write a song about lost love. He’s already written one of the most perfect ones ever (”Pints Of Guinness Make You Strong”), but inspiration counts for a lot when you’re tackling the most prevalent topic in all of song. “Spanish Moss” could be the track most likely to cross over to mainstream rock radio, but if you’re reading this website you probably agree that isn’t a good thing. Four b-sides were tacked onto the CD version after a low-quality album leak hit the internet roughly six weeks before the release date but they’re mostly unremarkable (although the seemingly stream-of-consciousness descriptions in “Bob Dylan Dream” might say more about Gabel and where he’s at these days than any of the other accumulated tracks).
In the end I’m ashamed to say it but I get the sense that I’d like this album a whole lot more if it wasn’t done by Against Me! I feel like it’s kind of a shitty thing to say, but I can’t really help it. This is a band that has exuded so much fury and passion over its career that it just feels wrong to have the edges sanded off in favour of Butch Vig’s antiseptic, pristine production. Anything that doesn’t fit with popular music is gone, right down to James Bowman’s distinctive backing vocals. They’ve either been banished or are buried so far under the severely multi-tracked Gabel as to be indistinguishable. It feels like a band that has done its own thing for so long is trying to force itself into a box that just wasn’t made for them.
But I don’t hate the album. It just isn’t what I expected from this band. I think what strikes me as most disappointing was that tracks like “White People For Peace” from their last record still had danger to them, a tenor that just isn’t present here. Moreover, the fact that New Wave ended with a track as brave and different as the phenomenal “Ocean” seemed to promise more growth and excitement in the future. To see them retreat to the blandishments of radio-ready rock and roll can’t help but feel like a step in the wrong direction.
If you’ve never heard Jonathan Richman’s music then I feel sorry for you. You’re truly missing out on an important part of life, namely unadulterated enthusiasm, joy, and love of life. Of course, I’m being somewhat selective when I say that. He’s a well-rounded artist, but goddamnit do I ever prefer his buoyant tunes.
For the last several months I’ve listened to little else than a mix tape of songs from throughout Richman’s post-Modern Lovers solo career that focus on the positive: songs of love and joy. From the youthful exuberance of songs like “I Have Come Out To Play” (”Gonna ride my bike past the root beer stand/purple squirt gun in my hand and I’m here to stay/oh mommy, oh mommy, I can’t eat no more/Gonna run outside that open door and I am here to stay”) to the simply-stated messages of love like “Everyday Clothes” (”I loved her, yeah I loved her, cuz that’s the way it goes/and I couldn’t have loved her more in just her plain old everyday clothes”) and “It’s You” (”Well now, you’re looking while I’m watching different girls passing by/Don’t you know that I couldn’t lose this love even if I tried?”) it’s a mix designed to make you smile your balls off.
For goodness’ sake, the guy even wrote the world’s only (good) love song to Wrangler jeans.
I’ll admit my knowledge of Richman’s greater catalogue is limited to much of the singles released during his solo career in the 80’s and the Modern Lovers material. But there’s so much to love it’s kind of hard to see that as a bad thing. His love of dancing, odes to the bank teller he has a crush on or the prospective paramour he meets on the street, his ancestral home land of New England, the wistful memories of summer days lived and lost…his songs are simply-executed stories of life and what it means to live and love. His solo career took a step back from the overt rock of the Modern Lovers; where most rockers seek to turn the amps to 11, he always seemed to pursue the gentlest, quietest, most understated sounds he could get. The songs are still rooted in basic American rock tropes but they’re undeniably his own style.
There is some irony in this entry; I’ve failed to simply state what is so engaging about music that is simply-written but endlessly engaging. Perhaps simpler still:
If you recall about seven or eight months back I was feeling pretty miserable and sorry for myself. Having been on the dumped end of a long-term relationship I was not engaging in very healthy behaviours. But true story: I heard someone play “Everyday Clothes” on a local community radio show one Saturday afternoon and it jarred me back to reality. Sometimes you just need a gentle reminder that there is a sunnier side to life that is worth keeping your head above water for.
I’ve found that to be truer than ever in recent months. I’ve moved on, I rebounded, and now I’ve started dating the prettiest little redhead I’ve ever seen. It’s impossible not to think of her incredible smile, the majesty with which she wears someone else’s cross-country sweatshirt, the sparkle in her constantly-changing green eyes when I hear these songs.
Anyhow, it’s weird to think that Jonathan Richman is almost sixty now. The overwhelming tone of perpetual youth and innocence in his music seems to contradict that fact. I expect his youthful enthusiasm will persist, regardless of his age or the age of his songs. They sound pretty timeless to me, anyway.
Buy his albums through Vapour Records. He apparently doesn’t participate in the internet on any level, but hopefully someone tells him a dude in Saskatchewan loves him.
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An acquaintance of mine once insisted she didn’t “get” Stars. Namely, why two vocalists she insisted weren’t that talented were pushed so prominently forward in the mix on their records, why the songs were always centered around some kind of melodramatic romanticism.
Stars - Dead Hearts [3:29m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download
