Set Yourself On Fire

1	Your Ex-Lover Is Dead 4:16
2	Set Yourself on Fire 5:39
3	Ageless Beauty 4:05
4	Reunion 3:41
5	The Big Fight 5:22
6	What I'm Trying to Say 3:22
7	One More Night 5:18
8	Sleep Tonight 2:44
9	The First Five Times 3:00
10	He Lied About Death 5:12
11	Celebration Guns 3:05
12	Soft Revolution 3:16
13	Calendar Girl 4:07

Barnes & Noble

Elder statesmen of Montreal's fertile indie scene, Stars have blossomed from their origins as a keyboard-driven duo in love with the Smiths, New Order, and the Pet Shop boys into a sextet capable of breathtaking pop. If their second album, 2003's Heart, was the first sign of this transformation, Set Yourself on Fire is the fulfillment of that promise -- a work full of zeal and beauty that is an early contender for best of the year. Running the gambit of emotions, Set Yourself on Fire is Stars' call-to-arms to a sleeping public -- a plea to wake up and feel something, anything, even if it's something bad. "It terrifies you, but it's real," Torquil Campbell sings on the album's centerpiece, "Soft Revolution," whose chorus soars with strings, horns, and "ahhs." It's just one of the disc's many mini-epics, which can turn from synth-pop to lush jazz within the confines of a song. Guitarist Amy Millan takes lead on the album's purest pop moment, "Ageless Beauty," as well as the ethereal "Sleep Tonight." It's when Campbell and Millan's voices meld, however, that they truly come alight, as on the waltz-time album-opener "Your Ex-Lover Is Dead," "The First Five Times," and "Reunion," all of which deal with that messiest of emotions -- love. There's no other band today making music quite like Stars, and Set Yourself on Fire is a gorgeous reminder that the best place to be at any given time is right here, living in the moment. Bill Pearis

All Music Guide

The artwork for Stars' Set Yourself On Fire is eye-catching and dramatic, like a protest painting or Keith Haring subway drawing. And that's before you find the inside shot of a woman in a ski mask and little else, contemplating a flaming hand torch. The art direction's boldness complements the maturity in Stars' music, where nothing's just indie pop and string arrangements sound as perfect as the keyboards. Vocalists Torquil Campbell and Amy Millan enunciate every word with careful precision, and they sing of remembered high-school romances, dead ex-lovers, and drunk current ones in basic but powerfully evocative language. It's a twentysomething life, told in short story form. In opener "Your Ex-Lover Is Dead," Campbell and Millan's characters don't rekindle their relationship, but they don't apologize for its end, either. "I'm not sorry I met you," they harmonize. "I'm not sorry it's over/I'm not sorry there's nothing to save," and the song's strings and brass build to a surging outro that's the wordless acknowledgement of everything they had. The title track is augmented by strings of its own, keening dizzily in the background of an undeniable electronic pop pulse, and "What I'm Trying to Say" does the same thing, but replaces the strings with electric guitar. "Reunion"'s near-perfect guitar pop brings to mind Spoon, and mid-album mates "Sleep Tonight" and "First Five Times" have different views on the intent of (and locations for) modern romance. The songs blend trumpet, keyboard effects, acoustic guitar, and electronic and analog percussion for an intelligent pop sound that doesn't need bells and whistles to be unique. Stars rely instead on melody, charisma, and lyrics as sharp as any modern essayist, and it's all they need to sell the quiet grandness of Set Yourself On Fire. Johnny Loftus

Rolling Stone

Witty, pretty indie rock for the sentimental geek inside all of us. Rob Sheffield