Chapter 157: Set Yourself On Fire!

Irsyad said that my Ipod was a very girl one and I wasn’t offended or anything, it was just…true.There are too many lovesongs, too much indie pop, soundtrack and indie folk. But very very little rock bands like circa survive, foals and whatever there is (see, his point proven).

EDIT: HAHAHAHAHA, SALIHIN ASKED ME TO BE THE DJ FOR THE OPEN HOUSE. HAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHA, INDIE MUSIC BITCHES, INDIE FRICKEN MUSIC, HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHHAA

Anyway, reviewing Stars’ Set Yourself On Fire doesn’t exactly help my case but this has been the best indie pop album I’ve heard since The Magic Numbers and that’s a tall order.

The Stars’ sound is one of a typified indie pop band, the introduction of trumpets, lush instrumentation and a well-balanced combination of love songs and those faster rock songs but what sets them apart from most bands would be their two vocalists, Torquil Campbell and Amy Millan whose voices complement each other much like Erlend Oye and Eirik Boe in Kings of Convenience- perfect.

This album highlights this wonderful blend of voices but also shows the orchestration of the band the perfect chemistry each member has. The album is made up of 13 songs packed with contention with love, perfect for a road trip when escaping from love, but perfect for running into it as well. The songs explain love as if a mountain being propped by matchsticks, the fragility being displayed fundamentally by all songs whether upbeat or down tempo.

The album opens with a tiny monologue: When there’s nothing left to burn, you must set yourself on fire. That is the eponymous voice that gives the album its start and from there on, the album moves upwards. Your Ex-Lover Is Dead is a play between boy and girl, accompanied by addictive but simple drum beats and violins about a potential lover left behind, rediscovered and the complications that come with it are unfounded. You wonder, why?

The album moves up tempo with the following three songs, “Set Yourself On Fire”, “Ageless Beauty” and “Reunion”, songs accompanied by low-res synth, arpeggio guitar riffs and supported by the drums. In this case, the drums will never be surplus to requirement but the requirement itself.

Songs like “The Big Fight” show exactly why Stars are typically Stars and nothing else. It is a lush duet, interplay of two lines about a break up between two lovers, between two people unwilling and willing to leave the relationship they have already left behind. As in all songs, the bass provides the foundation for what is truly one of the best lovesongs, like ever. Maybe for some, the indulgence in over-sentimentality would be excessive, but the band carefully toys with the words and the musicality, to create an atmosphere of utmost grief and lambast longing.

The band also manages to display a different facet to love, one we all try to avoid through “The First Five Times” a song which is…about the first five times someone has sex. At the backyard, at a party, at the doorway, at the bedroom and somewhere else, I can’t remember.

Then the album finally finishes on the melancholic note it never started on, ironically enough. A song about death gripping a women and her grappling with the reality and the realisation that she would not see the Him in her life. She cannot bear, she cannot bear, she cannot bear to leave. She counts the days, the months, the time till her demise as the man pleads her to be alive: “calendar girl/ who’s in love with the world/stay alive”

It is not the world she loves, but it is him.