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 It’s been four years since Ageless Beauty made indie aficionados of all kinds fall in love with Montreal’s STARS, and the five-piece look forward to returning the love when they escape the Canadian winter and head down to Australia to meet 2009. DENIS SEMCHENKO catches up with bass player/co-songwriter EVAN CRANLEY.
Montreal indie-pop luminaries Stars have truly been shining bright, the breakthrough hit Ageless Beauty from 2004’s Set Yourself On Fire and the anthemic Take Me To The Riot from last year’s lush In Our Bedroom After The War being just two watermarks for the unstoppable creative ball that has been rolling since the start of the new millennium. The charming, not-so-secretly Canadian Evan Cranley is more than happy to elaborate on the band’s collective chemistry. “Chris [Seligman, keyboardist/songwriter] and I write the template of what the music’s going to be, and then Amy [Millan, singer/guitarist] and Torquil [Campbell, singer] come in and write lyrics over the top of our musical arrangements and chord progressions,” he explains. “It’s pretty much everyone – Pat McGee [drummer] played a very big part in the last EP [digital-download Sad Robots] and In Our Bedroom, so it’s basically the three of us who compose the template and then the singers sing on top of it; everyone in the band has their own specific role.”
Compared to In Your Bedroom’s widescreen pop sheen, Sad Robots is a more melancholic, reflective affair. “Artistically, all of us have been in different mind spaces,” Evan reflects. “The name was inspired by Pat – I came up with it because I thought he was going through something he could not articulate. Other than that, it was fun to play around with drum machines, take our time and be creative with the way we put it out.”
Knowing of Evan’s bandmates’ love of The Go-Betweens, I wonder about his own musical influences. “I like Canadian songwriters – Neil Young, Ron Sexsmith and… a lot of others,” he hesitates, “but I’m inspired by a lot of different artists and genres of music, and I guess we all are. John Paul Jones of Led Zeppelin is fantastic – you can tell he’s a great musician, and I hope my voice in the band is just to make the songs and the music sound good.”
2007’s remix album Do You Trust Your Friends has seen both the cream of Arts & Crafts label – The Dears, The Most Serene Republic, Young Galaxy – and hip electro-popsters Junior Boys take individual spins on Stars’ catalogue. Evan confirms there’ll be more to come: “There’s tons of people we want to work with and there’s tons of people in Canada who want to remix our stuff; in the future, we’re going to be more spontaneous when releasing the music – there’ll be a live release in the new year, or maybe another EP, but more remixes is definitely what we want to do.” Having said that, Evan does not contemplate another Stars studio release for a little while: “2009 is going to be the year where we really take our time and make a most special and meaningful record – we might come back with it in early 2010.”
A branch of the extended Arts & Crafts/Broken Social Scene tree, Stars form a part of the phenomenon that has never before existed in Canada. “Friendship keeps it all together – that is the glue,” Evan states. “Amy and I are both members of Broken Social Scene and the label is basically a home to a musical community; we’ve been friends even before it started, and that’s the reason why it shaped – music is the most important thing that keeps the friendship together.”
STARS play the Pyramid Rock Festival in Phillip Island, VIC on Wednesday Dec 31 and The Zoo on Sunday Jan 4 with support from the wonderful Novocastrian atmo-folkies Firekites. The SAD ROBOTS EP is available from www.sadrobots.ca / www.myspace.com/stars
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