Review
Stars
Heart

There are few things worse in this world than a record composed by a group of people that are intensely passionate about the contents, but that doesn't live up to the enthusiasm with which it is crafted. Such is the case with the latest release from Stars, the Montreal pop group most widely known for their ties with Broken Social Scene, and one of their members playing a bit part in an episode of Law & Order. Heart is a collection of love songs, in case you couldn't tell. All of them. Every last one. An entire record of songs dealing with the workings of the heart and the relationships formed and nurtured due to it. And surprisingly, it's not bad, but it's certainly not all good. At first listen, I wasn't sure if this was a simple case of a select few songs being outrageously better than their surrounding tracks, or if these few songs were merely good and the other tracks were just plain bad. Upon further listening, and determining by methods for comparison, the better tracks off the record really are superb, as they come early on, before any of the weaker cuts come around. As for the less than great songs, they range from the okay to the boring to the downright terrible. "Death to Death" is just a terrible attempt at the band to craft somewhat of an aggressive love song that falls flat, ringing completely untrue in every sense of the word, with hollow delivery of bad lyrics. Likewise, "Time Can Never Kill the True Heart" is saccharinely sweet and just plain irritating, like the soundtrack to every Hallmark card that you've ever hated. Not that the entire record isn't saccharinely sweet, but for the most part, it's engaging and contained in some way as to at least fit the mood of the music and work well around it. Songs like the mid-tempo, low-key pop numbers that lead to the end of the record, "Look Up" and "Life Effect", are the forte of the band, and sometimes they transcend these humble means and deliver some truly great numbers, which they unfortunately don't on these previous cuts. They're nice enough, but they simply float by unnoticed and in unmemorable fashion, as does "The Woods", a mid-record cut that possesses no qualities to let it stick out from the others. "The Vanishing" and "Romantic Comedy" also follow in this mindset, but with more discernable melodies and more dramatic arrangements, highlighting the good qualities of the songs with flutes on the former and well-placed stop/starts on the latter. "Don't Be Afraid to Sing" also follows in this vein, closing the record with lines about being too afraid to fall in love that cloud over the rest of the song. However, where this record really shines through is with the trio of opening numbers, and the closing song. "What the Snowman Learned About Love" opens the song with a few minutes of keyboard notes being repeated until the actual song kicks in, which might leave you singing "You come around" incessantly to yourself if "Elevator Love Letter" didn't follow. This is, hands down, the best pop song of the year. Boy/girl harmonies, with jangling guitars and well-placed, tasteful synth lines, tell the story of a boy and girl who've neither learned how to love someone, and simply lie to each other to make the other happy. As if that isn't enough, the title track comes next, with piano, strummed open chords, and a forceful, propulsive bass line synced up with a drum machine, providing the rhythm of the song. It's heartbreaking choruses only serve to bolster up the verses about lost and leaving loves. Which leads right back to the conundrum that I mentioned at the beginning: these first three songs are so fantastic as to dull the impact of the rest of the record, showcasing the faults and lackings of all the other cuts. Still, it's not a bad record by any stretch of the imagination. Anyone who liked the more low-key moments from You Forgot It In People or who likes new-school emo but not the whiny qualities surrounding it would be encourage to pick this record up.