Stars concert impressions

Setlist

favorite moments of the night:
- Torquil: "No one's loved us like you have, SF. This is for you." leading right into Ageless Beauty
- Dancing to We Don't Want Your Body
- Turning the mic to the audience for us to yell out the ending lines to Your Ex-lover is Dead. and the violin!
- Amy's "whoops" lyrical slip-up in the middle of Look Up. You could see Torquil trying not to laugh while singing his lines in response.
- everyone jumping during Hold on When You Get in Love and Let Go When You Give It
- the light/percussion sequence at the end of Walls
- One More Night during the encore. THEY ACTUALLY PLAYED IT! It is so much better live.
- The audience singing along to what felt like most of the songs? But Your Ex-lover is Dead, Elevator Love Letter, and One More Night in particular. It always feels magical whenever those songs are playing. I can't recall another concert that had so much singing-along going on.

and other things:
- The girl standing behind me sang along out loud for a good number of the songs, and it was a bit distracting because her voice was a little whiny sounding. -_-
- she left for a few songs, but then the guy who was standing behind her started singing out loud also in a similarly whiny sounding voice. I tried edging sideways a bit so I could hear the band better but didn't exactly have much success. sigh.
- I got thrown off for a second when Torquil replaced "The Velvet Underground" with "The Digital Underground" in Soft Revolution. Keeping up with the times, I guess.
- I'm actually not that big of a fan of Do You Want to Die Together? (the lyrics are weird.) and Take Me To The Riot, but their live versions were good enough to sing along with anyway.
- The only songs I was missing at the end were Set Yourself On Fire, and perhaps Sleep Tonight (the trumpet! I miss the trumpet!), but maybe some other time. if Stars ever does a greatest hits kind of concert, I will definitely go, even if it means going all the way to Canada for it, heh.
- Free posters on the way out! The last time I was at The Fillmore, they were giving them out too... Is this just typical of that venue? They have the venue name and date labeled on them.
- I mentioned before to some people that the single (Hold on...) was my favorite song from the new album, but in light of this concert and a serious relisten, I think I like Walls, The Theory of Relativity, and The Loose Ends Will Make Knots more. That might not make as much sense since they didn't even play the last song at the concert, but yeah.
- This is the first concert I've been to where I recognized every single song that played. Achievement Unlocked!... just kidding.

This was probably my favorite concert of all the concerts I've been to. Stars has a really good stage presence, and I love seeing Torquil and Amy interact during their songs (especially considering the duet style a lot of their songs have). They just look like they're having so much fun in the process. It was a really rewarding experience for a fan that's been following them for years - just to see them still alive and going strong. I feel like my view of the experience might be a bit colored as a fan, though (since I was really emotionally invested in this concert compared to usual) - I'm curious how it was for newer fans.

If my impressions are any indication though, I still heavily favor their older songs to their newer ones. I mean, The North is still a decent album, but it still doesn't quite hold a candle to most of Set Yourself on Fire or some of their other older songs in terms of memorability for me. That said, I do like it more than their last album, which felt a little too overproduced, so I think I enjoyed this concert more than if I would've if I'd seen them two years ago anyway.

I'll admit, though, it's hard to beat the heights that SYOF set - so I feel a bit mixed every time a new album comes out, with the sense of "oh, this is pretty good... but not as good as it could've been." I don't really know how to describe it; like it's one thing to be catchy and well-made, but Stars' older songs have a certain quality that doesn't seem to be there as much in their newer stuff ... (more restrained and less overly dramatic?) although The North feels closer to their older style than the last album did, anyway. I think I just need to appreciate the effort they've been putting into their newer stuff though, since they're still trying to make new material after all these years at least. If they keep up this trend, I hope their next work will be even better.

It does make me wonder, though - perhaps next time if I see them again, I might find whatever songs that return from this album on that tour just as nostalgically refreshing as well.

As an aside, I also found out that Torquil played the voice of Bill Badger from Rupert, a cartoon I used to watch on Nickelodeon as a kid (and made a tumblr post about earlier this year!). I tried re-watching a clip from that series, and holy crap I wouldn't have been able to recognize that character as him no matter how I tried.