Stars : Five Ghosts

2010 release, the fifth album from the Canadian Alt-Rock outfit. Ten years after singer-lyricist Torquil Campbell and keyboardist Chris Seligman conceived of Stars in a decrepit New York apartment, one can listen back through the band's discography and hear dozens of songs that find new ways to contemplate the ancient, ageless subjects of love and death. To that end, The Five Ghosts, would seem to be business as usual. Indeed, a scan of its song titles ('Dead Hearts,' 'I Died So I Could Haunt You', 'The Last Song Ever Written') would suggest as much. And yes, the band whose previous album, 2007's In Our Bedroom After the War, imagined romance in the shadow of the threat of apocalypse, are as fascinated as ever by the potential of the ruinous love song. But The Five Ghosts is different from previous Stars albums. Simpler, sparer, and more confident (in its own quiet way), it also trades some of the band's previous dramatic flourish for the sort of direct, heart-bearing communication that comes from hard-won experience.