Stars - Live Photos from Webster Hall, NYC 9-22-12

There is something exciting about the energy of a sold-out show. Stars headlined a sold-out show at Webster Hall last month in support of their sixth full-length album, The North, which came out at the beginning of September via ATO Records. Paste Magazine gave the new disc a "9" and said "The North offers the same sense of depth and darkness that first propelled the five-piece into the limelight with singles like “Ageless Beauty” and “Your Ex-Lover is Dead,” but with an increased sense of awareness and age. The band has grown. The music has evolved. But the message of feeling alive despite all odds is more apparent than ever." Prior to the show, I hadn't heard any of Stars' music so it might of helped if I had listened to the new disc but I really enjoyed watching the crowd sing along to every song and feeling the floor at Webster Hall bounce under the weight of the people "pogoing" in place.



The live video below (is there ever a concert that doesn't end up on YouTube?) does a pretty good job of capturing the energy of the show.



Stars Fall Tour Dates
10/09/12 - Lawrence, KS, Bottleneck
10/10/12 - Tulsa, OK, Cain’s
10/11/12 - Little Rock, AR, Revolution Room
10/12/12 - Houston, TX, Fitzgerald’s
10/13/12 - Dallas, TX, Granada
10/14/12 - Austin, TX, Austin City Limits
10/17/12 - San Diego, CA, House Of Blues
10/18/12 - Los Angeles, CA, The Mayan Theater
10/19/12 - Santa Cruz, CA, Rio Theatre
10/20/12 - San Francisco, CA, The Fillmore
10/21/12 - Uptown Theatre, Napa, CA

Links:
Stars

Stars: Win a Pair of Tickets to Tomorrow Night's Show at Terminal 5 (Vagrant Records)

DOWNLOAD: STARS - We Don't Want Your Body

(photo by Norman Wong)
Indie rock band Stars (who share members with Broken Social Scene) released their fifth disc, The Five Ghosts, earlier this summer. After appearances at several major Canadian music festivals this summer, as well as Chicago's Lollapalooza, the band kicked off a Fall tour yesterday in Rochester. The tour stops at Terminal 5 tomorrow night and Stars are playing with Wild Nothing.

To win a pair of tickets to tomorrow night's show at Terminal 5, e-mail Mike.Brooklynrocks@Gmail.Com (subject: Stars @ Terminal 5). Be sure to include your first and last name in the emai! Winners will be drawn at randow and contacted. Good luck!

Love and death have always been the twin engines of the popular song: the pursuit of love and the mourning of its passing; the havoc death wreaks upon love; love’s survival in the aftermath of death; death as metaphor for the loss of one’s identity to the consumptive power of love...

Few bands of recent times have understood this as completely as Stars. And fewer bands still have so eloquently articulated, in words and in melodies, the seemingly countless ways love and death fill our days and rule our lives. Ten years after singer-lyricist Torquil Campbell and keyboardist Chris Seligman conceived of Stars in a decrepit New York apartment, one can listen back through the band’s discography and hear dozens of songs that find new ways to contemplate these ancient, ageless subjects.

To that end, The Five Ghosts, Stars’ fifth full-length album, would seem to be business as usual. Indeed, a scan of its song titles — “Dead Hearts,” “I Died So I Could Haunt You,” “The Last Song Ever Written” — would suggest as much. And yes, the band whose previous album, 2007’s In Our Bedroom After the War, imagined romance in the shadow of the threat of apocalypse, are as fascinated as ever by the potential of the ruinous love song.

But The Five Ghosts is different from previous Stars albums. Simpler, sparer, and more confident (in its own quiet way), it also trades some of the band’s previous dramatic flourish for the sort of direct, heart-bearing communication that comes from hard-won experience.



Links:
Stars