The Five Ghosts Countdown Timeline:

February – New songs premiere at War Child and Olympic one-offs.

March – The first “Making Of” video is released via YouTube. The band begins dropping bits and pieces of information on its official Twitter.

April – “Fixed” works its way onto the internet and, subsequently, thousands of mp3 players everywhere. The band announces its opposition to SB1070 and resulting decision to boycott Arizona.

May – Stars’ website gets an album-appropriate remodel (and a forum). “We Don’t Want Your Body” premieres on Pitchfork. The band hits the road for a limited Canadian preview tour.

June – The larger US preview tour begins in Boston. “Dead Hearts” streams as Song of the Day on NPR. “Wasted Daylight” premieres on My Old Kentucky Blog.

And, of course, “The Five Ghosts streams in full on NPR.”

Nearly three full years after In Our Bedroom After the War, Stars’ newest effort drops in a (small) commotion that takes fans from one released track to all 11 within just two months. The official release date for physical copies of the album is today, June 21. That its release coincides perfectly with the first day of summer seems only fitting, as The Five Ghosts has a decidedly warm-weather feel, especially in comparison to the band’s past few releases.

Despite their sunnier moments, In Our Bedroom After the War and predecessor Set Yourself On Fire were best experienced on a snowy night, wrapped in ten layers of heated blankets. The lush orchestration and emotional resignation of songs like “Your Ex-Lover Is Dead” and “Barricade” contributed to a sense of heaviness on both albums. That emotional heft wasn’t necessarily a negative quality, but by the end of a full listen to either album, chances were you really appreciated the catharsis of majestic closers “Calendar Girl” and “In Our Bedroom After the War.”

In contrast, The Five Ghosts, while it has its share of darker moments, maintains a decidedly more light-hearted feel. Album opener “Dead Hearts” helps set the tone right away. Despite being one of the more melancholy tracks on the album, it avoids heaviness through the sparse instrumentation of the verses, straight-forward vocal delivery and the perfect end-rhyme of lines like, “It’s hard to know they’re out there / It’s hard to know that you still care.” This combination of factors allows the song to retain a sense of innocence, albeit one that’s clearly worn by life experience.

If the charmingly mismatched content and feel of “Dead Hearts” leaves any lingering doubt as to the album’s direction, “Wasted Daylight” clears up the confusion. The latter is a honeyed ode to the ones with whom we can spend a lazy Sunday (ch-ching!) in bed, sans regrets. The slight crack in Amy Millan’s voice during each iteration of the chorus makes the song all the more endearing. From “Wasted Daylight” to album closer “Winter Bones,” nothing can ruin the spirit of The Five Ghosts. (Bad pun not intended, but now that I recognize it, it’s staying.) A driving beat persists throughout the album – showing up first and most prominently in “Fixed,” then continuing on through “We Don’t Want Your Body” and eventually “How Much More” – keeping things moving forward at a steady pace.

A brief mid-album lull in “He Dreams He’s Awake” and “Changes” does little to ruin the inertia. The former is a classic Torquil Campbell slow-builder that explodes into a mass of refined chaos, sounding something like Stars-meets-shoegaze. Then, as quickly as the chaos appears, it dissolves. (The absence of drawn-out song endings also separates this album from the past few). “Changes,” despite its rock-and-a-hard-place distaste for both stasis and evolution, rouses nostalgic visions of teased hair and pastel ruffles more than any real sense of distress.

“Winter Bones” ends the album on its most melancholy note. Millan laments, “I want to believe in anything…Winter lives in my bones / It’s all I’ve ever known.” Though the song is perhaps the one undeniable exception to my warm-weather, light-hearted characterizations, it’s also a gorgeous and fitting close to The Five Ghosts. The sparse instrumentation throughout much of the song and the exposed vocals recall “Dead Hearts”, bringing the album full-circle. And that the generally sunny album closes on a dark, understated note seems ironically appropriate, given those aforementioned sprawling, optimistic closers on the more wintry releases.

Even with this reversal of sorts in overall atmosphere and sequencing, The Five Ghosts will be instantly familiar to most fans. It’s clear that Stars know what works for them, and yet it’s not a formula they adhere to with tiring rigidity. Each successive album displays clear influences from their musical past, but with enough variation to show that the band is still flexing its creative muscle. More than any release thus far, The Five Ghosts truly feels like the synthesis of the band’s history, combining the electronic, synth-heavy sound of Nightsongs with the layered fullness of Set Yourself On Fire (the two albums you’re most likely to see referenced in “return to form” debates). And it has all the classic Stars elements: the combination of the sinister and romantic, the vocal harmonies, the back-and-forth exchanges between Campbell and Millan. The familiarity of it all keeps things comfortable, while the evolving balance of the various influences keeps things interesting.

As you may have figured, I rather like The Five Ghosts so far. After hearing it live in its entirety, I was worried that the recording would feel disappointingly lacking in energy. (This happens to me a lot.) And, while the experience is different through a pair of headphones than surrounded by a group of screaming fans, it’s not at all inferior. With just the music to attend to, it’s easier to pay attention to the layering and the subtleties and the meaning of the lyrics. And it’s much more obvious how successful the album is as a cohesive unit–played straight through, nothing feels out of place, even though some of the songs would seem to have little in common when considered individually.

My only disappointment is that The Five Ghosts is so short, clocking in at under 40 minutes. But I guess the saying is “quality over quantity,” and I’ve heard enough 70-minute yawners to accept the good that’s given, however brief. The upside to the length is that no one should have any trouble finding time to give the album a play. Considering that the album is available virtually everywhere as of today, what do you really have to lose? Probably not as much as you stand to gain from this heartfelt little gem.

Purchase The Five Ghosts from your local record store, itunes, or youarestars.com today.

For more Stars:
Website: youarestars.com
Myspace: www.myspace.com/stars
Twitter: www.twitter.com/montrealstars

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Review by Katherine Burcham