Tag: Chamber pop

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Vinyl

Vinyl love: Stars “No one is lost”

(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: No one is lost
Year released: 2014
Details: Gatefold sleeve, signed insert, double LP, pink/black split

The skinny: This Canadian indie pop band’s seventh album was the first record I ever pre-ordered on vinyl directly from the artist for my vinyl collection. If you’ve been following along on the last few “Vinyl love” posts, you might understand why. Stars were a pretty big deal throughout the 2000s and into this current decade in the Canadian indie pop scene. For this record, they went rollerskate paradise retro in pink neon and full of hope in its title, while knowing full well that in reality, we are lost. It’s a good record with some excellent tracks, definitely worth your time if you haven’t yet given it its due.

Standout track: “Trap door”

Categories
Vinyl

Vinyl love: Stars “The north”

(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: The north
Year released: 2012
Details: Gatefold sleeve, blue translucent vinyl

The skinny: Back in 2012, I had just started collecting vinyl, my wife starting things off by finding a couple of fine used picks in Greenwich Village while in New York. After that, I start visiting physical music stores again and rediscovering of the joy of browsing for music, picking up a record here and there, even though I didn’t have a turntable yet. When Stars released a new album, their sixth, in August of that year, I didn’t hesitate to pick it up. First of all, I saw that it was blue and secondly, a sticker pronounced that it included a download card, so that even though I couldn’t spin the record yet, at least I could listen to its contents. Luckily for me, it was another great album by the Montreal-based indie pop band.

Standout track: “Hold on when you get love and let go when you give it”

Categories
Vinyl

Vinyl love: Stars “The five ghosts”

(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: The five ghosts
Year released: 2010
Details: 6 x 7″ box set, coloured vinyl (pink, yellow, white, pink marbled, clear milky, light blue), wood box, 13 postcard photos (one of them signed)

The skinny: If “Set yourself on fire” was their best album, Stars’ fifth album “The five ghosts” is most definitely a close second, in my mind anyway. Two of its songs appeared in my Best tunes of 2010 list (at #20 and #7) and in one of those posts, I told the story about how I sent out a search party the night it was released to find a copy on CD. And as soon as I started collecting on vinyl, I knew I needed a copy on this format but they weren’t easy to come by. On a whim one day, I checked out the band’s website store and found they were clearing these 7” singles box set copies of the album. I jumped on it and though I don’t spin it very often, given the extra attention required for the listening of it, I’m very glad it’s part of my collection.

Standout track: “Wasted daylight”