If there’s one thing Canadian quintet Stars has been able to do for the entire duration of its 10-year run it’s make us sigh wistfully over beautifully crafted lyrics and gorgeous, blooming melodies. Since 2007’s In Our Bedroom After The War, the band members (many of whom moonlight as Broken Social Scene players) scattered for a while to work on some very un-Stars-like solo and side projects. However, rest assured that just-released fifth full-length, The Five Ghosts (Vagrant/Soft Revolution), is Stars still being heartbreakingly Stars, with an underlying theme of mortality featuring lyrics that focus on love in a “til death do us part” kind of way. Prepare to swoon when you see them play the album live on their tour of Europe and North America this fall. Evan Cranley, Torquil Campbell, Amy Millan, Chris Seligman and Patrick McGee are guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. Read our Q&A with Cranley.
Torquil: Northern soul is a genuine working-class dance scene, informed by black American culture and made whole by the aesthetic of northern England working-class youth culture. One of the earliest, most vibrant multicultural youth scenes ever, still barely breathing in small Northern soul nights all over the world. I guess I love the phrase itself, too; I was born in the north of England, and the icy, despairing pop music that came from there in the ’80s has always been soul music to me, because it’s working-class music. High art that comes from low culture. And to me that’s kind of a perfect definition of “soul” as a genre. Northern soul: If I’ve got any, that’s definitely the kind I have.
Video after the jump.
