The Five Ghosts
The Toronto indie pop veterans follow their theatrical, big-room work with a more muted, grayer record.
For Stars, romance is always ridiculous. Each of the Canadian pop quintet’s four previous albums have mixed self-consciously overblown metaphors—with love manifesting itself as battles, resurrections, and blazes—and curiously specific scenes from relationship-focused procedural dramas. And so while The Five Ghosts neve…
Returning to work with Tom McFall, who produced the group’s 2005 album Set Yourself on Fire, Stars recorded their fifth outing in their home city of Montreal, writing together as a unit in the studio.
Flaunting their sad and sassy pop that appears to have emerged fully formed from day one, the Canadian five-piece theatrically redefines cool with tales of love, death, and life in between.
Stars trade much of their cinematic atmospherics for simpler, punchier electro-pop on their fifth album, in turn, watering down their very creative aesthetic - and ultimately, their appeal.
The album falls somewhere between the murky waters of M83’s current shoegaze-glazed pop and Billy Corgan’s overly tweaked The Future Embrace sound.
Montreal's 80s-influenced indie types go all in for the melodrama on their fifth album, and while it's hugely pretty, it's airbrushed to the point of blandness, writes <strong>Dave Simpson</strong>
Stars - The Five Ghosts review: Stars release some of their most fluid and organic material to date.