Baby, the stars shine bright

My infatuation with Stars started, as so many of these things do, with something that was both familiar and strange. In this case, it was a cover version of a song that had been indelibly etched years before on my teenage brain: This Charming Man, by The Smiths. Except that this was not The Smiths I was hearing on this weekday evening in the early 2000s, overtiming at the office as usual with my fellow magazine staffers. My officemate, graphic designer extraordinaire Paul, who was our source for all things unabashedly indie, was playing something that — to my ears, on that first encounter — took the Smiths song and made it sound, for lack of a better word, cuter. And happier.

I was ready to hate it, but something about it was impossibly alluring. This was more than a callow cover, something other than a clueless desecration. This was, in the simplest terms, pop music with a heart. And a brain. Like many of my favorite bands — Prefab Sprout and Everything but the Girl among them — here was an act that was not embarrassed by its intelligence, yet also wholeheartedly embraced the sheer joy of melody, the immediate pleasure of pop. I found myself asking, “Who is this?”

It was Stars. It was their first album, the almost paranormally catchy “Nightsongs,” and I was hooked. I borrowed it from Paul, of course, and ended up listening to it all the time. I found that the originals were even better than the cover that had drawn me in. A year or so later, I would piggyback on another officemate’s Amazon order, and get their second album, “Heart,” for myself. And so on and so forth, on to 2004’s spectacular “Set Yourself on Fire” all the way to last year’s well-received “The North.” Six proper studio albums, a handful of EPs, even a cleverly-named release of remixes (“Do You Trust Your Friends?” from 2007).

I haven’t listened to it all to death, not yet; but every release has something that sticks, that stays, that has become part of me, in a way. From the lovely, lilting, and oddly danceable My Radio (two versions, “AM” and “FM,” off the debut album); to Look Up from “Heart,” a song that can save you if you need saving and if you let it (“You fall, feeling like it’s just begun/ So far, keeping it together’s been enough/ Look up, rain is falling, looks like love”); to the magnificent, headlong, soul-stirring Ageless Beauty from the third album, widely considered a candidate for their best (though there is certainly room for debate); to The Night Starts Here and Dead Hearts and the wonderful Hold On When You Get Love and Let Go When You Give It, all of which somehow live up to their respective titles through a combination of tunefulness, soul, and bulletproof romanticism.

And two weeks from now, they’ll be playing here for the first time. It’s taken over a decade, but I trust that it will be worth the wait.

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Kindassault, Raven 7 Multimedia, and No Seat Affair! are bringing in Stars for their first Philippine gig this Feb. 16. They’ll be performing at the Mega Tents at Metrowalk; go to facebook.com/kindassault for more details.