Stars live review
This review is of the Stars gig at The Concorde 2, Brighton on Feb 4th 2007.
Who are Stars?
Stars are a band focused on the core boy girl duo, Torquil Campbell and Amy Millan. Both are also members of the revolving collective Broken Social Scene, along with members of Feist, The Dears, Metric and Do Make Say Think. On record the band play two types of tracks, fast guitar driven tracks with breathy male/female vocals, a little like My Bloody Valentine, and slower more romantic tracks.
On stage tonight we had a drummer, bassist, lead guitarist, keyboards, and Torquil and Amy both singing and switching between acoustic guitar, keyboards, trumpet and various other percussion instruments.
Ratings
Performance
I’m not a fan of Stars album’s per say, each of the last two have around 4 amazing tracks on, the livelier tracks, whilst the remainder are actually quite boring. Tonights performance was about the same – half the time I couldn’t believe how exciting the songs sounded and the rest of the time I felt disinterested and bored.
The first half of the set was certainly better, during the second half the slower songs became more and more theatrical, and at one point I felt like we were watching a musical rather than a gig. Perhaps unsurprising as Torquil Campbell is in fact an actor as well as a musician, he has been in Sex and the City and Law and Order amongst other things. He certainly dominated the stage, but I feel a little more time should be given to Amy, she’s got a beautiful voice, like listening to velvet.
The encore was very disappointing, 3 relatively dull tracks, and Ageless Beauty, their breakthrough track which would have made a great ending, and had yet to be played, was startlingly absent.
Far from a bad performance, partial genius, partial boredom.
3/5
Sound Quality
The instruments was fine, but during the louder tracks the vocals were far too low in the mix. You could barely hear Amy half the time, which was a real shame.
3/5
Banter + personality
There was plenty of good banter from Torquil, he mentioned how much he loved Brighton many times, regaled us with a quote from Brighton Rock and then complained that no one got it (apparently we need to go the library and read more). All good humored of course. Amy barely spoke though, Torquil seemed ready enough to talk for the both.
Lots of attention had been given to the stage, adorned with tattered bunting (not sure if that was intentional) and flowers and lamps everywhere. Combined with the black tie and bowler hat guitarist it looked like we were at a gothic funeral in an old ladies lounge. Top marks for effort.
The guitarist, as well as being very well dressed also made lots of effort, running around and leaping all over the stage, pausing only to fling flowers into the crowd. The band certainly didn’t just stand there shoegazing as one might expect from the albums.
Close to top marks, but lets hear more from Amy next time…
4/5
Audience
The Concorde was around 3/4 full tonight. The audience was mainly composed of couples and had a mature bent to it, very few indie kids around. Behaviour was on the whole excellent, with the exception of the support band “Apostles of Hustle” who seemed to keep chatting next to me, although I think they were stood by some noisy dicks, one of whom actually started bellowing on his mobile “I’M AT A GIG”, so perhaps it wasn’t all them.
Everyone managed to keep quiet during the quiet numbers and seemed to get into the louder ones. The general feeling was that people loved the band and were really into the gig.
5/5
Lose-yourself-ability
I found myself thinking about plenty of other things during the slow numbers, and the tooing and frooing between paces meant there were no periods I could lose myself fully during the faster tracks. There were moments though, and I this band were certainly easier to engage with than some.
3/5
Overall Score
Not a flawless gig, but a good night with some great tracks. This band could pull off a mind blowing half hour set without a problem.
3.6/5
Listen to a Stars gig in full online
Over at All Songs Considered you can listen to a full length high quality sound Stars gig. Its from this tour, and is roughly the same as tonight’s setlist. There’s also an interview with Torquil afterwards, and you can access that separately over on the webpage. You’ll also be able to skip the less good songs so wins all round!
Watch a complete Stars concert
This is a concert from their 2005 tour for the superior album Set Yourself on Fire, and yes, they do play Ageless Beauty. The sound is nowhere near as good as the above audio gig, but you can have a look at them as well.
Buy Stars Albums
Set Yourself On Fire is the best Stars album in my opinion, some great tracks to be found. It was considered on of the albums of the year by many leading sources, and scored an impressive 81 average in Metacritic. Drowned in Sound say “Set Yourself On Fire could become your favourite record, and Stars should justifiably be many people’s favourite band.”.
In Our Bedroom After The War came out this year, and again, has some good tracks, but is inferior to Set Yourself On Fire. It scored a respectable 70 on Metacritic.
More about Stars
The official website is a subset of their record label Arts&Crafts, who also have Los Campesinos!, Constantines and The Most Serene Republic. There is news, a forum and tour dates, the design is not great though and its quite hard to read.
The Stars Myspace has the usual and lets you listen to tracks from the new album.
There is an excellent Stars Wikipedia entry which gives a full history of the band.