Vinyl love: Stars “Set yourself on fire”

(Vinyl Love is a series of posts that quite simply lists, describes, and displays the pieces in my growing vinyl collection. You can bet that each record was given a spin during the drafting of each corresponding post.)

Artist: Stars
Album Title: Set yourself on fire
Year released: 2004
Year reissued: 2012
Details: Black vinyl, 180 gram, repress

The skinny: Fresh off seeing the Canadian indie pop collective last night at the  National Arts Centre with the house orchestra as support, and where they performed the song below, “One more night”, “Your ex-lover is dead”, and others off this very album, I thought I’d spread some Stars love this morning. Released in 2004, “Set yourself on fire” is likely still considered the band’s high water mark, despite releasing five very fine albums since and still touring regularly to appreciative audiences. This album, along with Arcade Fire’s “Funeral”, was a big part of the reason that the world turned their collective ears to Canada and we had an indie pop renaissance of sorts for a few years at the beginning of the 2000s. This is big, bold, and beautiful sounding chamber pop (which leant itself well to orchestra accompaniment last night) and an album that was amongst the first that I sought out after starting my fledgling vinyl collection.

Standout track: “Ageless beauty”