Stars: A Soundtrack for Your Life

By Jeannette Madden
Staff Writer

On October 28, Stars, Canada’s premier indie pop band, will appear at the Aquarium, bring their lush instrumentation and nimble production in support of their fifth full-length album, “The Five Ghosts.”

The five members of Stars are also part of the band the Broken Social Scene (Torquil Campbell, Amy Millan, Chris Seligman, Pat McGee and Evan Cranley) but make no mistake, Stars is totally independent and Evan Cranley wanted to make sure that was understood.

High Plains Reader: How do you describe your music?

Evan Cranley: I don’t know. I would call it celestial pop.

HPR: Okay. You guys are members of Broken Social Scene, correct?

Evan: No, no. That’s not right. We have nothing to do with each other. A lot of people think we do but we’re two different bands.

HPR: Yeah, you’re totally independent…Okay, what are your influences?

Evan: Um, you know, classical music. We’re really inspired by ‘80’s pop music. We find that there’s a real incredible time in popular music where a lot of amazing songs were written and we were quite young at the time and that age of music really left an indelible interest.

HPR: How do you write your music? Is it a collaboration or what happens?

Evan: It’s definitely a collaboration. I would say that Chris and I kind of score instrumental and then instrumentally what the pop song is and then Amy and Torquil come in and write lyrics over. What we start kind of inspires the song and then lucky for us the pop music is a common obsession of ours, a mode we all love writing in, so it’s fun to write in that kind of mold. A lot of rules when it comes to that kind of pop structure but within that kind of limitation I find it quite challenging to tell a story within that amount of time.

HPR: How does that differ from “In Our Bedroom After The War”?

Evan: Definitely we were going through a lot of things personally and spiritually. There were two different themes from record to record and I would basically say we drew a lot on what was happening in our personal lives. I wanted to push the synthesis more than ever and I found that you know, having the synthesis involved was a great kind of juxtaposition to what we were going through lyrically on the record, so…it was a big change that way.

HPR: What’s a little history of the band?

Evan: Oh, we got together twelve years ago. We’ve all been friends from Toronto and we ended up kind of forming this band in Brooklyn and ten years ago we moved to Montreal to continue writing and producing music up in the city that we love. Montreal is very much a very inspiring place for us. We use Montreal as a vehicle…Montreal’s at least another entity, at least for me. Being in this band, it’s kind of a muse, I guess.

HPR: So, you guys went back to Tom McFall for this album?

Evan: Yeah. Tom and the band, we both produced “Set Yourself On Fire,” which was our 2004 release, and we gave Tom full production for this record. We really needed someone to almost kind of grasp this record for us. It was nice to have someone we could kind of go through. We produced four records on our own so it was really lovely to kind of get on with someone we were friends with that we respected musically and to also have as guide, as a filter.

HPR: Do you ever have guest artists on your albums? Do you ever have anyone else come on with you guys?

Evan: On our last album we had a guy by the name of Andrew Whiteman (Broken Social Scene).

HPR: Who’s the “Apostle Hustle”?

Evan: He is a really great friend of ours who also lives in Montreal right now and he plays some guitar and he’s been on our last two records and he’s just a friend and he’s an incredible guitar player and it was discussed that he can turn wood into water and I think that’s a great way of talking about his playing.

HPR: Sure, sure. How is it having your own label now?

Evan: It’s nice to have our own imprint because we’ve kind of curated this home for ourselves so whether it means future records or solo projects or other bands that we like, it’s in place for the future, you know? If we want to go down that road, it’s an option and it’s also nice to kind of have that home for your own aesthetic.

HPR: Sure. It appears to me, and I could be wrong, that you all tour an awful lot…regardless of who you’re with, it seems like you’re on the road an awful lot.

Evan: Yeah, in this day and age you have to be on the road a lot. A lot of how you sell yourself as a band is how you put yourself into your shows. I think the live show needs to stand out more than it ever has. I think we’re just really enjoying this cycle of our touring because we don’t usually write a record and tour at the same time. We release a record and come back and tour for 18, 20 months. It’s just really great to see fans that have been with us forever react to our new material. You have to stay on the road to survive. That’s kind of a necessity as a band right now.

HPR: What can Fargo expect from your show?

Evan: Hopefully, we’ll take you away from your life for two hours and become a soundtrack for you. That’s what I hope happens.

Questions and comments: .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

If You Go

What: Stars, Total Babe
Where: The Aquarium
When: Thurs, Oct 28, 6-8:30pm
Info: 701.235.5913