Stars
Issue #33
In Our Bedroom After the War (Arts & Crafts)
By Laura Leebove
Published: September 1st, 2007 | 12:00am
Stars’ In Our Bedroom After the War is exactly what should be expected from an album with that title — painful and heartbreaking, while remaining hopeful and romantic.
At first listen, Bedroom is the same mix of guitars, synths, and half-whispered melodies that defined Stars’ sound in the band’s first three full-length releases. But don’t be fooled — from then on it’s a whirlwind of disco beats (“My Favourite Book,” “The Ghost of Genova Heights”), haunting vocals (“Personal”), and piano-driven soliloquies (“Barricade”).
Musically, Bedroom is phenomenal — it has some of the same poppy qualities as its predecessors, but with less bleeping and more experimentation with slower beats. However, it’s the dark lyrics and excellent narratives that really showcase the Canadian group’s creativity. Based on song titles alone, the album tells the story of living through a war: “The Night Starts Here,” “Take Me To The Riot,” “Life 2: The Unhappy Ending,” “Today Will Be Better, I Swear!,” “In Our Bedroom After the War.”
But each song also tells its own story — “Personal” is about a woman, Caroline, trying to find love while grieving a loss, likely from the war (“Sorry to be heavy, but heavy is the cost,” she says), which scares the guy away. In “Barricade,” frontman Torquil Campbell croons, “Meet me at the barricade / The love died, but the hate can fade.”
Even though In Our Bedroom After the War as a whole defies genres — every other song could be from a different band — the repeated themes flowing through it tie the 13 tracks together perfectly.
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