Revisit of the Week: Stars - Nightsongs (2001)
Before the Juno and Polaris award nominations, before the anniversary tours of beloved albums that have become a cultural touchpoint for a particular generation, before the performances all around the world - there were just two guys in a small New York flat, converting their ailing dreams in their respective arts into gentle, heartfelt pop songs.
Nightsongs is one of those kinds of debut albums where the gap between the artist then and the artist as we have come to know them is wide enough that the record is considered by most a historical curio before the real band begun (that this hasn't been reissued in a long, long time helps). Stars were officially just Torquill Campbell and Chris Seligman at this stage; Amy Milan makes a couple of vocal cameos but she's among a handful of guest vocalists, including the future Metric frontwoman Emily Haines, and wouldn't join the band fully until the record was more or less done and they wanted to throw a few gigs; one of the "bonus tracks" "Toxic Holiday" was the first song recorded with Milan's creative input and thrown at the end of the album at the last minute. The rest of the band, similarly, only appeared when Stars turned out to have more potential than just being a daydream for those two guys in their apartment. It's an altogether more low-key affair, devoid of the indie rock energy they'd properly break through with and without the skyscraping emotional pop anthems that would spawn a devoted fanbase. There's a few stylistic exercises, a Smiths cover, and a general sense of there being little more to its direction than just making whatever songs come to mind together.
It's why I really like Nightsongs, though. Normally when we throw words like "intimate" we refer to very sparse, personal records where it feels like the singer is whispering their secrets into your ear. Nightsongs is intimate too, but more in the way that your friend has whipped out their phone and is playing out some songs they've put together recently. It's cosy and warm and just so earnestly happy to just play these songs for you. Campbell and Seligman are already displaying a fantastic knack for melodies and Campbell's lyrics and delivery are full of his charm and wit: in all but scope and size, this is Stars. But the scope and size are so different even to the next album (which is basically a more ambitious version of this, in its core) that Nightsongs sounds unique compared to anything else in the Stars discography. It's one part bedroom pop, one part earnest singer/songwriter magic, one part turn-of-millennium Euro-chillout (a very unexpected part of the DNA but obviously there), and one part just two friends messing around with programming software on their computer and seeing what comes out.
Stars would go on to create bolder and brighter - and better - albums, quite a lot of them. Their excellent album run is one of the great secrets of indie pop which seems to pass by even people who are normally tuned into these sounds, steadily if accidentally growing their fanbase during each album cycle when one particularly passionate blogger or music journalist makes it their mission to sing their praises to anyone who could hear. But here, they're just playing their sweet, lush melodies to an audience of few, inviting you into this small hallowed group. And like the title says, it's the perfect kind of music to play in your own small living space when the dusk falls and the world calms down, and you can watch the stars through the window as the songs play in the background.
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