Stars
Do You Trust Your Friends?

(Arts & Crafts)

First Appeared in The Music Box, May 2007, Volume 14, #5

Written by John Metzger

Do You Trust Your Friends? is not the typical tribute album. Filled with re-mixes, reinterpretations, and re-imaginations, it is a song-by-song re-crafting of Set Yourself on Fire, the critically acclaimed, breakthrough outing that turned Stars into one of the biggest success stories of 2005. Where many artists would have tried to capitalize upon their good fortune by rushing back into the studio to prepare more material for the marketplace to devour, Stars wisely opted instead to take its time in planning its next move. Considering that the band hardly could be considered to have arrived — particularly from a broader, commercial-minded perspective — this strategy isn’t without risk. In a bid to spur its own rebirth by burning itself at the stake as well as to remind the world of what it has to offer — thus, laying the groundwork for its highly anticipated follow-up, which is slated for release this fall — it allowed its comrades from the Montreal music scene to highlight themselves by reworking Set Yourself on Fire’s contents. For the most part, none of the tracks lose perspective on the quiet, chamber pop-derived moodiness of the original album, though they nonetheless don’t succeed in improving upon Stars’ formula either. In the end — whether it’s the World Party-inspired, Stones-y swagger that Jason Collett brings to his interpretation of Reunion; the classical-minded, Beatles-dipped psychedelia that swirls through Final Fantasy’s Your Ex-Lover Is Dead; the heady disorientation that Montag brings to Set Yourself on Fire’s title track; The Stills’ epic, guitar-charged take on Soft Revolution; or the delirious freak-out of The Dears’ What I’m Trying to Say, Pt. 1 — Do You Trust Your Friends?, at the very least, offers enough substance to placate Stars’ fans without distracting them from the main event.

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Ratings

1 Star: Pitiful
2 Stars: Listenable
3 Stars: Respectable
4 Stars: Excellent
5 Stars: Can't Live Without It!!

Copyright © 2007 The Music Box