Pop CD

Stars, Set Yourself on Fire

(City Slang)
4 out of 5 4

This third album from the Canadian five-piece is a rich, multi-layered thing of beauty - but it leaves a bitter taste in the mouth. "When there's nothing else to burn, you have to set yourself on fire," a voice of doom instructs; it is the perfect introduction to these tales of lost, broken and abandoned love.

Brief thrills and murdered passions turn glossy in a warm glow of harmonies and a cascade of hard synths and feathery strings. Through this sticky-sweet tangle waltz vocalists Torquil Campbell and Amy Millan, their half-whispered words speaking cold truths. Guitars chime in Reunion, while Your Ex-Lover Is Dead swings between wordy whimsy and a pounding, aggressive rhythm.

Sometimes the packaging is too big for the small sentiments, with the title track rattling inside so many pretty bows and colour. But most of these powerful pop songs bloom to match the intensity of the feelings they lament.

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