Stars' decision to move to the Arts and Crafts label to release their third L.P., Set Yourself On Fire, allowed them to move out of the oppressing shadow of former labelmate Broken Social Scene. Since some of the members of Stars play in the large collective, many see the band as just a side project.
An opening spot on Broken Social Scene's latest tour also made the line even more blurred between the two bands. Stars needed to break free of this relationship to forge their own identity.
Broken Social Scene and Stars do share some aesthetic similarities-they play relatively easily digestible pop music. But where Scene's You Forgot in People sprawls through their diverse influences, from salsa to prog, Stars' Set Yourself On Fire focuses its attention to perfect the fusion between light guitar rock and synth pop. Strong hooks derived from The Smiths and New Order lie in the center of their song, while the space surrounding these fundamentals comes from more electronic sources of the '80s like Depeche Mode and The Human League.
Set Yourself on Fire has an excellent sense of timing; the busy arrangements, complete with antique synth sounds, horn arraignments and strings sections, rarely clutter the sound. The extra drum machine or added violin hit at exactly the right moment to either fill up a coda in \Reunion"" or to swell a chorus to anthem-worthy proportions in ""Soft Revolution.""
The single and the album's highlight, ""Ageless Beauty,"" features lush keyboard work with fuzzy bass synth lines backing the reverb-heavy guitars and female vocals that give the song a pre-Loveless My Bloody Valentine feel. Stars only recall the style on this track, which sets it apart from the cleaner and tidier pop songs surrounding it.
Lyrically, the album deals with the relationship politics of conflict and resolution. The boy-girl vocal combo of Amy Milan and Torquil Cambpell has a restrained intimacy that places the listener outside of the bedroom, peeking in through a crack in the door.
The opener, ""Your Ex-Lover is Dead"" leads in with a gentle string section, adds a driving drum kick and a simple guitar strum only to strip it back down at the chorus. This formula reinforces the lyrical content by showing the highs and lows of romance through careful orchestration.
But the sheer abundance of all this organic and computerized sound sometimes give the album a homogenized feel; the constant use of exaggeration make the songs bleed in to each other. The lyrics to ""What I'm Trying to Say"" relate to the narrator trying to communicate his feelings without saying the words, could serve as a lesson to the band-understatements reveal subtleties that bombastic gestures glaze over.
