Music
Stars, King Tut's, Glasgow
Lisa-Marie Ferla
Four stars
In the world of Stars, Monday is the new Thursday. And with tracks from their latest album, No One Is Lost, making up a fair chunk of the set list on the Montreal five-piece's return to Glasgow, it would have to be: its disco-flecked dream-pop, backing lyrics of heartbreak and loss, belongs to late nights and introspection and abandon. From The Night - the album's opening track and the first song they play - is the perfect example; its precision beat getting under the skin while singer-guitarist Amy Millan sways like a disco Stevie Nicks.
If No One Is Lost feels like a stylistic departure for the band on record, in front of a crowd the brutal honesty of its songs came to life. In other hands the album's more synth-heavy songs would sound remote and supercool, but instead the girl in front of me looked like my best friend and nobody is there to do anything but dance. Especially frontman Torquil Campbell, in a home-made Beautiful South t-shirt, going full cabaret with Millan during heady break-up ballad You Keep Coming Up.
What has always made Stars special is how well the two voices that front the band slide and meld together and Ageless Beauty, guitar-led and giddy, from 2004's Set Yourself on Fire is a perfect example. Their duelling voices on the glorious, shimmering Hold On When You Get Love - itself an incredible exercise in self-restraint until the giddy rush of its chorus - are a highlight of the night; as is the borderline anthemic Turn It Up, with a guitar solo too big for the room and an outro that could have itself been an encore.
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