oh man. i first fell in love with stars in 2005, when i first discovered "set yourself on fire" back at wrst fm in my days of music directorhood. instant infatuation, for realz. tracks like "your ex-lover is dead" and "one more night" got me hooked. beautiful and simple indie dream pop melodies. love it. never did i think that five years later i'd be living in chicago, interviewing them for a music site. but i did. on friday i chatted up torquil campbell for chicago innerview and i gotta say he won me over with his polite charm and nerdy humor. i was kinda pissed off at 08's "in our bedroom after the war" with all of campbell's wanna-be morrisey antics, but after speaking with him for 20-odd minutes and love love loving the newest release "the five ghosts," i'm won back. can't wait to check this outfit out at lincoln hall on june 9th. shit will be real. my condensed cleaned up version will appear on the site next month, but we had such a solid convo i felt inclined to post it somewhere for all the other stars fans out there.
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There’s not much to say about Canadian indie dream weavers Stars that hasn’t already been said. The Five Ghosts, Stars’ fifth studio release, may be the group’s very best collection to date—full of synth pop energy, the stories of love and death are gripping and majestic. Singer Torquil Campbell talks to Chicago Innerview about the band’s new label, the recording process and his belief in the afterlife. (Stars plays a sold-out show at Lincoln Hall on June 9th.)
Arts and Crafts was your home label since 2003’s “Heart.” Your upcoming release is being distributed via Vagrant Records, but is being put out on your own label, Soft Revolution. What inspired the start of your own label and the departure from Arts and Crafts?
Just you know the contract had come up and we’ve been doing what we do for ten years and it was literally just a chance to try something new, to set up a new paradigm a new system and we had an amazing time being with Arts and Crafts and we’re still going to put records out with them through other bands and stuff but it just was a time to do something else so we took that chance. I think in this era of music and this era of the music industry its implicit upon you to take as much control as you can of what you’re doing because you’re trying to get a piece of an ever decreasing pie and the more you can increase the directness of the relationship of you and the listener, the better off you are. I think that was the main thrust of what we were doing was just to take control a little bit more of what we were doing and open up the pathway between us and the people who buy our records more directly.
Do you think you’ll be signing other acts to your label?
That’s something we haven’t even talked about. I mean, that would require this record make a lot of money and that remain to be seen so you know, if we have a huge success on our hands, maybe we’ll go and find a bunch of people, but both those things seem highly unlikely, so. . . (laughs).
Would you mind describing the recording process of the Five Ghosts?
We did it in three sessions which had two halves to them, so there was a writing and recording half in each session. So we would write for three weeks and record for three weeks and we did that three or four times. We didn’t demo, everything that we recorded, we wrote and left sort of unfinished until we got into the studio and let the songs be finished and have its recording only be once. I think a lot of bands struggle against demoitis, you write it and record the demo and it’s got an energy and a freshness and a feeling to it and then you try and go back to the studio and recreate that and that I think has been a frustration for us in the past so we wanted to make sure that the recording that’s on the record is the one where that particular kind of magic happened. So we didn’t do demos and we left the process of finishing up the song to the studio and to our producer Tom Mc Crawl, and that was great I think we all benefitted from that a lot.
It seems like everyone gets their two cents in reviews these days, but very rarely do the artists themselves get the opportunity to sell their works directly—as your own critic, how would you describe the new record:? In comparison to past albums?
Oh god, I don’t know – how would you describe how you looked when you were twelve in opposed to fifiteen – it’s a reflection of all of us. I’m certainly more proud of this record and more sure that this record is a great piece of work than anything else we’ve ever done. Because we didn’t let any other circumstance be, we just didn’t stop until we all felt that way. I think in the past it’s been harder for us to be honest with ourselves and to face the parts of our music that we weren’t happy with and I think this time we gave ourselves time and we gave ourselves the circumstances to really tackle those weaknesses so they’re not there anymore, so I would say this record is the sound of the band who really knows what they’re doing now and aren’t going to settle for anything less the best they can do.
The Five Ghosts is more synth backed compared to past efforts. Was there any conscious decision towards this change?
Yeah there was, I mean the thing is that I think there’s synthesizers a lot on all our records, maybe they’re more veiled and doubled with organic instruments on other records and this time we kind of let them be and let them speak for themselves a little louder. We were very much conscious of wanting to, we’ve always been a synthesizer band and we’ve started out making synthesizer records and I think we wanted to rediscover that part of our sound and Chris had bought a lot of great metala keyboards during the time we were making In Our Bedroom and we just wanted to explore that part of stuff that we’ve always had in our lives but had things diminished by covering it up with a lot of other instrumentation.
There’s a hint of death with The Five Ghosts, both with the title namesake and such tracks as “I Died so I Could Haunt You,” “Dead Hearts,” and “The Last Song Ever Written.” Is there a story behind the album title or was it just picked at random?
It was a hard year for us, we lost people and we gained people and we experienced I think, losing people we love on a level we never experienced before and so ghosts were everywhere. And death and beginnings and endings were in our face, it was sort of inevitable that it would become a part of what the record was. I think that ghosts are sinister until you lose someone and then they become something you really hope exists and something that you, you want to feel them all around you because you suddenly realize that heaven is a great invention because it sort of speaks to the hardest thing about life which is the sense that one loses people one loves and they just go they don’t exist anymore, they’re not anywhere and that’s a terrifying thought when you lose someone you love. The idea of someone being a ghost becomes a way of communicating with them or a way of believing in their existence still and a way of them still having presence. So that was all stuff that was very much rattling around inside our heads while we were making this record.
Your albums always showcase original art, where do you come up with the concepts?
Well Bedroom was a painting by my brother Tom Campbell, who’s a great painter. This cover was designed by Jacob Lorenz who works at the Cardboard Box Project which is a wonderful company in Montreal that Chris (Selingman)’s brother runs. They do artwork and merch and design for us and Arcade Fire and for a number of other bands and they’re just an amazing sort of platform for people’s idea s and there’s a lot of creative people within that art house that help out to make those images work. Those photographs are 19th century spirit photographs – people used to, when their loved ones would die, they would be sent to have a photograph taken and the photographer would superimpose a photograph of their loved one over top as a sort of fake ghost photo that you would put up in your living room or your hallway, or whatever. That comes from that idea of sort of Victorian ghost photographs.
What is your favorite track on the record?
That’s a tough one, (repeats question to self), I dunno, it changes day to day, I think Love Fix, that’s a great pop song and I tend to love the ones I’m not singing on. I love Changes, you know then I can just be listening and enjoy them, whenever I hear my own voice I’m staring at a mirror, so. . .
What’s the last show you attended as a fan?
I went to see Phoenix, who I love.
What’s currently on your iPod? Any new artists we should be listening to?
Always, lots I think. There’s always tons of great music happening. I love the new Shout Out Louds record, I love that Washed Out record, I think that’s lovely. I think The Drums are a great band. I love so much stuff, whenever I’m asked to come up with stuff, my mind freezes but the new Gorillaz record is fantastic. I think he’s always someone you scramble to keep up with as far as his ability to write hooks and his pop know-how, you know? But I love that Shout Out Louds record, that’s certainly making a lot of time on my playlist I listen to that record a lot and that new Kings of Convenience record. I love a lot of stuff from Sweden and Norway and the Nordic countries, I think they share a lot in common with what Stars do I guess.
What’s the last great book you read?
I just read Farewell my Lovely by Raymond Chandler. It was an incredible book, extraordinary book – I try to narrow down my books so that I don’t read anything but great books because there’s so many books that it’s hard to waste time something you’re not certain is going to be amazing. So Raymond Chandler is a sure thing, all you have to do is buy a book by Raymond Chandler and you’re guaranteed a masterpiece.
If you could spend a night covering any other artists’ material, who would it be? Who would you want to cover your material?
That’s a tough one, I’d love to be in a Smiths cover band sometime, just because I know it so well or a Pre Five Sprout cover band but that would be tough to find other musicians who’d be able to play pre five sprout cover songs. Who to cover us, maybe Perro del Mar and Tom Waits? I’d like to hear them do a bunch of duets. They’ve got plenty of their own shit to do though, so not sure they’ll get around to it. (Maybe they’ll read this interview and give you a call), Maybe maybe, they’ll be inspired.
What’s your favorite part about being on the road?
Playing the shows, playing the shows to be honest is the only good part of being on the road at this point in my life. I have a baby daughter and a beautiful wife and there’s not much to compel me to hang out in hotel rooms and busses except the shows which are amazing and which are inevitably the highlight of the day so just being able to play the music for people who enjoy it and realize that we’ve gotten to the point where we can do that all over the world is a very privileged thing. You feel very lucky and grateful for that.
With the recent May release of BSS’s “Forgiveness Rock Record” and Stars’ June release of “The Five Ghosts” only a month apart, you must have all been pretty busy. Were you all equally involved in the latest BSS contribution or not so much this time around? Any chances of both groups coinciding any tour appearances?
Not much, Evan I think did a little bit of work on it, Amy did a little bit of work on it but mostly that was a record that those guys made as a five piece which are MacIntyre, so there was much less involvement from the sort of auxiliary members of Broken then there has been in the past. I think they felt they needed to focus their energy and their sound and we were making our record simultaneously so there was very little time as well to spend on it but I know Evan jumped on some tunes and I know Amy did some too.
How long have you known the other members of the band?
I’ve known Chris since I was 8 years old, so thirty years. I’ve known Evan since I was twelve, I’ve known Amy since I was 18, so a long ass time – Pat since I was 25?
What’s your relationship with Amy like – when it comes to songwriting is it a one-man show or is it a collaborative effort?
We help finish each other’s stuff, like I write for Amy a lot. So the conversation, the voice is always in our mind. The lyrics tend to be either a me or Amy kind of thing but there are some songs that we finish together or songs that Amy will write something and I’ll come up with something to add or vice versa. That happens quite a lot. The initial impulse of the song is generally one person and the basic, totality of the song tends to be one person but it can be finished or augmented or helped out by the other person and as I say, it’s always the conversation of the music is always in our minds you know and balancing those two vocal qualities and finding a way to, umm, I think that’s sort of more my job in the band, is writing songs for the two of us. It tends to be if a song that both of us are singing, I’ve written it. I mean, I’ve written the words, the music is always collaborative and always starts with Chris and Evan and Pat.
How would you say the internet has affected your music? With things like MySpace, blogs and digital piracy – would you say that your career has been positively or negatively affected?
Well you never know, because you can’t go back and replay it without it. I’d have to say positively in all total, because a band like ours, without the internet, we’re not getting to Singapore or Taiwan or Japan or Australia or any of those places that we have gotten to. If the internet didn’t exist, we might sell a couple of hundred records over in those places and never be able to afford to get there and never be able to build an audience there so it’s an incredible tool in the sense that it allows you to reach out all over the world to people. I think we’re also a band, however, that’s probably our records have probably been stolen 4 or 5 times often more than they’ve been bought, so in that sense I guess we’ve suffered – but without that technology would those people who are stealing the records even know we exist? Probably not, so, it’s a trade off. But ultimately I think it’s been an amazing thing for our band and the technology of MySpace – speaking of MySpace, although I know it’s not popular anymore, for a band as a platform, it’s an unbelievable simple and effective way of putting your music up and allowing people to hear to it. MySpace has died off recently, but we’ve had all of seven million hits, that’s a helluva lot of people who’ve been exposed to our music through that particular website.
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