By Jimmy Draper

EVERYBODY IS A STAR: Montreal indie rock band Stars want
you to love them tinder. Photo by Jamie Pattyn.

"Pretense is an interesting word because it suggests that you're making a whole lot of fuss and that it doesn't mean anything," Campbell continues. "But what I'm saying means something, and just because people may not agree doesn't make it pretentious. But if that's what the word means to them, then I'm so into being that. I'm so into being Marc Bolan. I'm so into being Lou Reed. I'm so into being David Bowie. I'm so into having a vision and trying to live it in a theatrical, beautiful way that communicates with other people."

Indeed, if any band seems intent on remaining unapologetically sincere, even at the risk of being perceived as ostentatious, it's Stars.

Since first dubbing themselves pioneers of the "soft revolution" with 2001's Nightsongs (Le Grand Magistery), the quintet – Campbell, co-vocalist-guitarist Amy Millan, guitarist-bassist Evan Cranley, drummer Pat McGee, and keyboardist Chris Seligman – have been crafting heartfelt, Smiths-inspired pop reverie that quietly insists apathy is never a desirable substitute for pure emotional expression. Amid swirls of lush, synth- and string-laden instrumentation, Campbell and Millan sing songs in which lovers break up, make up, and delve into matters of the heart as if their lives depended on it. Such dramatic, unabashed earnestness may strike some listeners as overly sentimental, but it's a welcome respite from today's plague of ironic poses and contrived aloofness.

Constellation Canada

Such sincerity, it turns out, carries over to Stars' real lives as well. Throughout our conversation, Campbell eloquently discusses his respect and admiration for his friends, his appreciation for the inclusiveness of indie rock, and the nuts and bolts of his own creative process. At no point does he sound anything but completely humble, either.

"I'm just a fucking geek who wrote shit on a binder in high school," Campbell says. "Those of us who did that were trying to create a mythology for ourselves and live in a world of our own imagining, where things were glamorous, and the bands we loved were big stars, and the little phrases we came up with in our shitty poetry were important.

"I'm still in that world. That's the process of creating – having the bravery to put those pathetic little notions down on a piece of paper and then get them out in art."

Out of those notions came the decidedly not pathetic Nightsongs, followed by 2003's Heart (Arts and Crafts). Both albums established Stars as purveyors of some of today's most sophisticated orchestral pop, but the recent Set Yourself on Fire (Arts and Crafts) is by far their swoon-worthiest, most fully realized release yet.

"Nightsongs was all about subversion, and Heart was pure emotion, but I'm trying to couple the two [approaches] with Set Yourself on Fire," Campbell says. "Like, I love songs like OutKast's 'Hey Ya!,' with that great line, 'Why oh why are we still in denial, 'cause you know we're not happy here?' It's this incredibly unhappy line about the end of a relationship, but you're not even realizing that you're listening to this guy talk about the end of something, because you're having too good of a time. I think that's a really brilliant little trick that you can do in pop music."

Fiery furnishings

Set Yourself on Fire is full of such brilliant little tricks. Brimming with deceptively seductive pop, the album pairs beautiful lullabies and upbeat numbers with surprisingly caustic subject matter. "I'm not sorry it's over / I'm not sorry there's nothing to save," Campbell and Millan tell one another on "Your Ex-Lover Is Dead," making an ugly breakup sound positively inviting. Likewise, Millan's "Celebration Guns" is so exquisitely languid that it's easy to overlook the fact that she's lamenting the deaths caused by Bush's war on Iraq. Such extreme juxtapositions – the musical and lyrical, the romantic and political – Campbell explains, were intentional.

"Our whole mandate in terms of the lyrical content of the record was to try and point out the relationship between people's personal behavior and the world," he says. "If you don't talk about love, and if you don't realize how important love is every day to every single human being, then you can't really talk about social change or justice or revolution. Until there's an understanding of love and compassion, you can't have a loving, compassionate society."

Practicing what they preach, Stars have spent several years forming bonds – both artistic and personal – with other Montreal bands, such as the Dears, and they share members with the Toronto-Montreal collective Broken Social Scene. With such a talented, close-knit music community, which also includes the Arcade Fire, Wolf Parade, the Stills, and Godspeed You! Black Emperor, it was only a matter of time before the press began to speculate – as the New York Times and Spin recently have – about the impetus behind Montreal's musical renaissance. The answer, according to Campbell, is that the city's artists simply aren't afraid of old-fashioned, heartfelt expression.

"There's a kind of doomed-romance vibe that we've all tapped into here, and some of us took it more epic and more intimate, but we definitely share a sense of romance and seriousness about our art," he says, before dismissing the accusations of pretension once and for all. "What we do here is not a pose, and it's not a shuck and jive. All of us are just trying to translate what we really feel about life into our music. Stars perform Sat/26, 9 p.m., Bimbo's 365 Club, 1025 Columbus, S.F. $15. (415) 474-0365.

 To purchase the music featured in this article, visit iTunes:

1. Stars, Set Yourself on Fire (Arts and Crafts)