FUV's New Dig: Stars

No One Is Lost
Stars
ATO / Soft Revolution Records

Montreal's Stars, a vital part of that city's busy music scene, has put out six studio albums over the past 15 years. Now they're back with their seventh, No One Is Lost.

On the new album, Stars venture out into the nightclubs, where the energy is palpable, the music has a pulse and the darkness is illuminated with a neon glow. The allure and glamor of the nightlife is on display in the album's artwork and in the music, but reach beneath the day-glo colors on the surface, and one finds a world of loneliness, sadness and lost opportunities hidden under the glitz. Perhaps the ghosts of where the album was recorded crept into the music.

No One Is Lost was the first album created at the band's new recording studio, located near a closed-down Montreal nightclub. A once-vibrant nightspot reduced to a decaying shell of its former self seems to be a fitting setting for the songs on this album. Beneath even the most effervescent songs on No One Is Lost are ruminations on being lost and alone. It's the sad underbelly of the gleam that's on the surface.

But it's that gleam that gives No One Is Lost its charm and personality. The album is brimming with bright pop melodies, some of them uplifting dance floor epics, like the album's opening song, "From The Night" and others are saturated in melancholy, like the gorgeous "Look Away." Plenty of highlights lie within, like the driving "This Is The Last Time" and "Are You OK?," the powerful upsurge of "What Is To Be Done?," plus "No Better Place."

Perhaps the proceedings are perfectly summed up by the title track, which closes the album. A pulsing dance beat carries lyrics like "His party's crazy but he knows it's gonna end," "Who's gonna be here when everybody dies? Put your hands up 'cause everybody dies" and "Put your hands up if you know you're gonna lose."

On No One Is Lost, Stars succeeds in creating a work that is the soundtrack to both the highs of the night and the lows of the morning after.

More:

• FUV Live with Stars - at Rockwood Music Hall, 2014
• Studio A Session: Stars - at WFUV, 2013
• Studio A Session: Stars - at WFUV, 2010
• Studio A Session: Stars - at WFUV, 2007
• Preview songs or buy 'em (all purchases benefit WFUV):