Stars Do You Trust Your Friends? by: Steve Scully Mon:02-Jul-07 Label: Arts & Crafts Year: 2007 WB rating 80 out of 100

In 2004, Canadian band Stars brought out Set Yourself on Fire. The pop-savvy they put on show, strengthened by the vocal harmonies and instrumental depth throughout made for a great album, and one of the more highly-acclaimed of its year. This year, Stars have re-visited their landmark record with Do You Trust Your Friends?, a collection of remixes from Set Yourself on Fire, undertaken by many friends throughout the flourishing Canadian music scene.

This album has a disclaimer of some sort in the opening few seconds. Friends of Stars each quote the name of the album of which this is a re-imagining, and in doing so suggest that this indeed is the mantra for the album’s own existence. On Set Yourself on Fire, the title evoked the same melancholy as its subject matter. The act of setting oneself alight – the self-destructive act of turning all your frustration and bitterness on yourself – is as apt a symbolic gesture as possible for Stars’ beautiful, hauntingly sad exercises in pop-depression. For Do You Trust Your Friends? the statement articulates what we all must be thinking when a band commissions an album of covers (re-imaginings, re-inventions, remixes, call them what you like): “when there’s nothing left to burn, you have to set yourself on fire.” In other words, when you have nothing else to do, and are running low on new material, try dismantling, maybe even destroying what you’ve already got.

Set Yourself on Fire was a glorious mix of cinematic and melodramatic, self-indulgent melancholy that still is a valued listen. The initial reaction to the remixes is not as glowing. While Stars created what was an, above-all, personal album with Set Yourself, the idea of remixing it, throwing it around to your friends to tinker with, is something abhorrent. If I were to approach the album in comparison to the original, a poor review would result, regardless of some fantastic covers. But as a stand alone piece the results are quite different.

‘Your Ex-Lover Is Dead’ is the album’s highlight. Gone is the orchestral mix of the original, now there’s just a simple little piano and some trilled strings guiding us through Stars’ beautiful balladic lyrics: “Captured a taxi despite all the rain/We drove in silence across Pont Champlain/And all of that time you thought I was sad/I was trying to remember your name.” Working with such strong material, one could forgive Final Fantasy for staying true to the original, but the minimalist approach suits the song just as well as the grandeur of Stars’ own recording: the focus is on the lyrics, the simplicity of the themes within them, and the music echoes this simplicity in spine-tingling fashion. The crescendo has also been replaced by an ambulatory finish, with the lyrics rather than the music guiding us to the catharsis: “There's one thing I have to say so I'll be brave /You were what I wanted, I gave what I gave/I'm not sorry I met you / I'm not sorry it's over/I'm not sorry there's nothing to save.” This album is worth listening to for the sheer beauty of this track.

‘Reunion’ is another of the album’s strongest moments. Jason Collette has taken Stars’ once-again relatively morose tone and constructed a pop-rock gem: it sounds so eerily like the Rolling Stones. Again, the lyrics run the show, however, directing the emotional core of the music: “All I want is one more chance to be young and wild and free/All I want is one more chance to show you/You were right for me.” So too do the lyrics in the electro-jazzy, Minotaur Shock remix of the stunning lo-fi track ‘The Big Fight’: “he doesn’t want her but he just won’t let her go.” ‘Celebration Guns’ oozes a country/acoustic feel, but the harmony-driven, chanted chorus, evokes so many other contemporaries (Arcade Fire, My Latest Novel amongst others), that again it is as grand and melodramatic as Stars prior effort.

The album does have low points, however. The tedious guitar-solos in The Stills’ ‘Soft Revolution’ often over steps the cowboy swagger to parody-like extremes. Similarly, The Dears’ ‘What I’m Trying To Say’, parts one and two, are repetitive, and the vocals evoke none of the pure emotion of the album’s other tracks. So, while the Friends’ highs show the strength of lyricism and honesty, the album’s lows reveal the indulgence that comes hand-in-hand with such intense introspection.

If Set Yourself on Fire was an album about testing relationships, then Do You Trust Your Friends? vindicates the idea of friendship. Throughout Set Yourself, we are served with stories of failed romance and broken hearts, but in Do You Trust, the strength of connectivity in the ‘friendship’ relationship is tested, and it wins out. So strong is the trust here, and so successful at times is the result of this , that Stars seem to be going back on their negative, melancholy outlook on life, and in a way advocating now the power of friendship and love in a constructive sense. After this experiment, we might see Stars go back to their brilliant, evocative sadness, or we might see them with renewed, positive vigour. Either way, although there’s no new material on this album, it is at least a glimpse of a new emotional direction for Stars, who have shared their pain with their friends, and have perhaps found that golden Oprah-ism: ‘closure’.