Florid, glorious pop music
The crowd is full of drunken Canadians, their accents ringing out with brash, emphatic satisfaction for one of their gems, and sparkling anticipation for another one of their treasures - we wait for Stars.
We don't wait long. Soon, Amy Millan, Torquil Campbell, Evan Cranley, Chris Seligman and Pat McGee enter. They're dressed well, as if they're going to a semi-formal affair for the world-weary - debauched prophets following the Apostle of Hustle and gospeling the cost and value of loss from the vantage point of greater age. Thirty-something fun!
Torquil says hello to us, and excitedly declares that "this night is already fucking great!" Evan Cranley throws a flower from one of the be-decked amps into the crowd. It flies through the air and, unexpectedly, I catch it. I bring them to my nose and smell - beautiful. Florid. Glorious. Pop. It marks the point in which the night became somehow sad and magical in the way that Stars is so eminently capable of. The audience and the band merge somehow, and it's one big wholehearted sensation, a mixing of everyone's bittersweet histories of love and love and ... well, love.
They play old songs from Heart and Set Yourself on Fire and new songs from their latest album In the Bedroom After the War. Torquil is stagey and affected in all the ways he's supposed to be, and Amy is unconsciously and gorgeously cool in all the ways she always is, her hair covering her face and her black silk dress stylish but still somehow appropriately rock 'n' roll - her tattoo stark beside the strap on her dress.
Torquil says "here comes some Montreal songs" and they play Your Ex-Lover is Dead. The room buzzes with everything pop music is supposed to do. Drunken Canadians sing along (very off-key), but still it's wonderful. When they do Reunion Torquil, who was born in the UK but grew up in Canada, changes "driving twisted through the suburbs" to "driving twisted through to Essex" with a cheeky grin.
Flowers are continuously thrown into the crowd, until almost everyone on the floor has either a flower or a petal in their possession. Pretty girls smell the blossoms while the band plays, and tortured expressions pass across their faces fleetingly as certain lyrics remind them of certain persons (perhaps) long-gone from their lives. It is a re-visioning of the flower power era, with all the fat cut from its soul and only the delicacy of sensation left to us.
It is a resoundingly beautiful scene, seeing all these people caught up in the music, trapped in present and past tenses ... with FLOWERS in their hands and hair and shirts and belts and button-holes, and some, as always, crushed underfoot wishing us all 'what they wished us before, but harder' for having fallen. Beautiful and fleeting and beautiful. The perfectly human incongruities of 'true-love songs' mixed with songs about "wanting to literally fuck someone to death ... to fuck them until they die" (Campbell's words, not mine) just make the night better.
Near the end of the show, just before the encore, Amy asks Torquil to "tell the Purple Turtle story" (the Purple Turtle is a venue across the street from Koko). Torquil smiles, and says "well, a long long time ago we did a show at the Purple Turtle, and now we're here again in London. You know, we've been singing this syrupy shit for a long time, and it feels really good that people want to come out and listen to it, so thank you!"
And then, hilariously, "and if anyone in the audience has some weed and wants to show their appreciation for tonight's show, they should come to the merch table and see me, and I am NOT fucking around!" He pauses here and laughs, semi-serious, then adds "that wasn't a very philosophically deep introduction to our last song this evening..." He pauses, searches for a word, and then says "all I can hope for is that your memory of this night will keep the music we played, and erase us, and all you'll have left is our music as a soundtrack to your fucked up beautiful lives. Thank you."
They play. At the encore Andrew Whiteman comes on with Stars, still wearing his Jesus jumpsuit. He plays along. People sway and a sense of rapture hangs in the air and lasts after the show ends and we walk towards the exit, flowers in hand and elsewhere. Strangers smell each others' flowers, and somehow, through the power of proper pop music, all the nonsense and brevity of random encounters this evening become fraught with meaning, and we walk away half-pleased.