Staff Blog
Stars, Oct. 24, The Trocadero
posted by Brian Howard
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| Photo | Brian Howard |
| Flowers for Amy Milan |
| Stars big-up Hall and Oates, perform "Window Bird." |
I’m gonna come out and say it. I love Montreal’s Stars, but Torquil Campbell, with Amy Milan one of the band’s two singers, has a tendency to drive me up the wall. Milan, whose brusquely angelic voice lit up songs like "Elevator Love Letter," "Ageless Beauty" and new numbers "Midnight Coward" and "My Favourite Book" on this rainy Wednesday, performs with a quiet dignity, an icy stoicism even; Campbell, who — okay, is an important foil to Milan on most Stars cuts — struts around with an impish over-theatricality that seems to scream "Pay attention to me! Love me!" It drives him to say things like "This song, in the birthplace of freedom, is about fucking someone to death" and to exclaim how important it is to the band that the crowd had discovered their music and that he hoped that we’d all go home and forget about the band and just remember the songs and us and how they relate to our fucked up pornographic lives or something like that. Anyway, Stars put on a fittingly dramatic stage show for their charged, emotive orchestral synth pop. Colored lights and fog bathed the six-member outfit in fluctuating tapestries. Campbell, in the wardrobe highlight of the evening, emerged in a jacket completely bedecked in lights and roamed the stage like an extra terrestrial. The band members threw flowers into the audience throughout the performance, and although the songs from their new album, In Our Bedroom After The War, were generally well received, none got the fanfare the big songs from their breakout Set Yourself On Fire — "Ageless Beauty," "Your Ex-Lover is Dead," "What I’m Trying To Say" — did. It was hard to stay annoyed at Campbell, however, given his mid-set big-upping of Hall & Oates before launching into "Window Bird": "Give it up for fucking Hall and Oates, ladies and gentlemen, they built this city." Okay Cambpell, you’re off the hook.
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| Photos | Brian Howard | |
| Stars @ The Trocadero, Oct. 24, 2007 | |
THIS SHIT SUX.
DEATH TO INDIE-ROCK!
zing?
Awesome show, great band. Torquil is definitely a showman, so give him that. He’s certainly not as annoying as Bjork’s foil was in Sugarcubes. And he has a great voice.