- teecomb in Pitchfork Leaks Some of the 2008 Lineup Animal Collective rocks so hard. It’s has great melodies and most people who hate on it have only heard one era of them that didn’t...
- Mark in SonicBids & CMJ 2007: Anatomy of a Scam? …Meh. Sonicbids is a total scam. Our band was stupid enough to fall into it to. It didn’t take us long to figure out that they keep...
- Matt K in Just a small complaint… Agreed whole-heartedly. Nice observation.
Remix compilations are, essentially, retrospectives: culling the past work of a band that is self-admittedly past its heyday or has already broken up. However, the remix album, which has become increasingly popular among indie artists who haven’t yet amassed the reputation or repertoire of bands with retrospective remix releases, signifies something a bit different. Featuring all of the tracks from a previous album (usually the most recent) in order but mixed up, the remix album acts as a placeholder of sorts for a band uncertain about its future or simply facing a lull in new material. By releasing a remix of their 2004 (2005 in the U.S.) release Set Yourself on Fire, Stars initially appear to have fallen squarely into this category. In the worst-case scenario, remix album efforts come off as lazy and/or just plain lame (this was, I believe, the general consensus about most of The Faint’s Danse Macabre Remixes), but sometimes–as with Minus The Bear’s Interpretaciones del Oso (released earlier this year)–such projects can yield interesting results.
By giving their remix album the title Do You Trust Your Friends?, Montreal chamber pop band Stars bring another element of this quickly-growing genre back to the forefront: the importance of who is doing the remixes. It’s fitting that Stars–whose songs favor earnest quirkiness over irony and goofy feelings over detachment–would call attention to the inherent vulnerability of laying one’s work open for aural redesign; it’s also not surprising that Stars emphasize the personal relationships behind this project. The remixes, covers, and collaborations on Do You Trust Your Friends? are, quite literally, the work of Stars’ contemporaries and friends–bands or artists that have toured with Stars (Apostle of Hustle, The Dears), shared members with Stars (Kevin Drew and Stars bassist Evan Cranley co-founded Broken Social Scene, which eventually also included Stars vocalist/guitarist Amy Millan), or inherited members from Stars (Emily Haines, who was a guest vocalist on a few tracks for Stars’ first full-length album, Nightsongs, went on to front Metric). So, without further ado…
Friends Stars can really, really trust:
Jason Collett (covering “Reunion”). While the lyrics of this song are pure Torquil Campbell, right down to the details of huffing up the results of high school chem class experiments, Collett’s version, which brings in handclaps and countrified guitar, transposes the experience described in the song’s lyrics onto the more right-leaning, Skoal-slinging element of the population–a contingent that Stars hasn’t exactly embraced in the past. With Jason Collett at the helm, suddenly this song isn’t just about one wussy kid from in Vancouver or all of us dorks who identify with him: it could be about a line dancing, Wrangler-wearing dude from Anytown, USA (as a leftist geek with redneck roots, I adore this result). Read more »
