Stars
The Five Ghosts

One of my first reviews on DeBaser was about an album by Stars, the one before the one I'm about to review now.

My relationship with this Canadian band is something that transcends admiration: it is much more.
It is love, hate, inconsolable tears, tears of joy, knots in the throat, laughter, screams, ecstasy, and depression.
An amalgam of emotions that I can't portray for you by modeling words: nonetheless, they are emotions, strong, very strong emotions, ones that can make you feel miserable and divine.
For me, Stars' music is everything love is: a feeling you might sense from afar but, be sure, it cuts through your stomach when you least expect it.

I always feel a bit afraid to put on their records: I remember the music perfectly, but every time there's a nuance that dredges the river of memories and spits out abandoned feelings, disillusioned hopes, broken dreams, and some small forgotten treasure that warms the soul with gentle caresses of nostalgia.
Whatever Stars might be for me, they will never be something that provokes cold indifference in me.

And it's sad, therefore, to realize that the Stars themselves think completely differently with this album. Where are the heartburns of “Set Yourself On Fire”? Where are the tender lullabies of “In Our Bedroom After The War”?
With this fifth album, it seems the Stars have taken a damp cloth and wiped the chalkboard of their work. Badly wiped: because you can still perceive something, but it is nowdissolved and blended with the void around.
“The Five Ghosts” is a good electro-pop album like many others. There are good points of "shoegazed" pop, even quite tender (“Dead Hearts” is the best, the piece most faithful to the group's old soul), the alluring intersection of male and female voices, some newromantic synth-pop in the style of Prefab Sprout, a few borrowings from the Phoenix, and various plastic hums that tickle the ears. The form is there, and it's quite decent.
But this is not a Stars album that I have learned to love. It is not that group that an unknown Demon of Beauty drove me to buy blindfolded. It's not the group that once suggested to me "Hey, you, buddy, you're crazy about this girl: what are you waiting for?". It's not the same group that then told me "What can you do: it's gone now. Vent, it won't hurt you.".

“The Five Ghosts” envelops but does not involve, it does not silence. It doesn't make you smile at the wonders of life and despair at its deformations. It looks you in the eye for a moment and then looks away, caught by a previously nonexistent shyness. It's music that can appeal to everyone, and therefore it can never be "yours".
It's an album that, only if I had the capacity to critique objectively (if, for instance, it had been some indie darling's debut) I would rate with three stars without much trouble.
Instead, I see that name on the cover, and I just can't overlook those arrangements that are too electronic when I remember well that once the electronic inserts were just a nuance (though indispensable) around a rich musical body, a sound magma of so many instruments that never (or almost never) became cloying. I can't even say "whatever" in front of such insubstantial lyrics because I would have to erase from my mind those sweet lyrics that, years ago, squeezed my eyes even if I didn't know a word of English. No, I can't do it... sigh.

In conclusion, if you want to know Stars, or already know them, listen, and keep listening to the old albums (especially the two I mentioned). This one isn't bad: it just serves no purpose. Instead, listen to the XX, Magnetic Fields, Perturbazione, or the evergreen Prefab Sprout if you're sensitive and your heart is in turmoil; avoid disappointing yourself with this.

So, sorry, I can't rate this album. I can only pretend it was never made and wait for the sacred fire of visceral electro-pop to reignite and make us feel joyfully and inconsolably alive.