Shining a Light on Heartache

This is an amazing album cover — let’s just get this out of the way right off the bat. It’s perfect for staring at to contemplate the poignant contrast it offers. It looks like what living in a digitally transitioning world feels like. This is an actual place that exists in the world; what must it be like to live on each of these sides! And after listening to the subject matter of much of Stars’ aptly named There is No Love In Fluorescent Light, it all adds more case evidence to the growing dossier of romantically charged, ironically square electro-pop indie music. There’s a lot of pining out there right now for a sense of nostalgia that might have never even existed in the first place. Where do Stars add their voices to the mix?

The first song, “Privilege,” begins as softly as driving down that freeway into the night. It doesn’t take long for their aesthetic to endear itself. Those friendly synths and baroque riffs in the background of the chorus are familiar and are always welcome but don’t exactly tread new waters. It’s when “Fluorescent Light” kicks into gear with the male voice for the established soothing feminine one to play off of, that the pop anthem leanings of Stars reveal itself.

The delivery of the pre-choruses specifically give the song a drive that communicates that want to actually muster up the energy to get out of bed, off Netflix, and out with these two to go find some fluorescent lights. It’s an interestingly written song, and it ties back to the album name to start to build a narrative. This story being told, though, is content with being told in a very chill way, both to Star’s strength and detriment. None of these songs are bad at all, but Owl City and Death Cab For Cutie already exist. “Losing to You” and “Hope Avenue” sound great, but with an album title and cover that strong, it’s always on the mind for these songs to tie back and build upon each other instead of giving more of the same cheery fluorescent sounds that we’re used to hearing. And then, “Alone” starts.

This is the turning point of the album where it all makes complete sense. After “Fluorescent Light” established the power-pop strengths of this album, “Alone” develops this concept further by functioning as an anti-power anthem. This sort of driving love song is usually about a person or dream, and this song is in fact about a dream, but it’s romanticizing having your space away from people you can’t relate to? Genius! It’s the introvert’s anthem that they didn’t even know they needed! It totally makes sense that this man would agree with the sentiment of the album title. It’s a fantastically sung, great idea.

The rest of the album almost acts as a denouement to this grand statement of a song. With the exception of the Haim-tastic “Real Thing” that has a great shuffling rock base and solid pop chorus to it, the rest – especially “The Gift of Love” which approaches schmaltzy territory – are noticeably lower energy. Again, not a bad thing. “The Maze” in particular has a spacey synth foundation that grows and develops into some cool textures. It’s just that drive of the past songs is infectious enough that one would expect the rest of the songs to have that kind of determination as well. But hey, maybe that’s just who Stars is. Not everyone has to be so over the top all the time, and drive comes from the passion to defend the right to chill. When 1:27 of “Wanderers” brings that humble, yawning string part that the past songs have hinted at, with the lyrics about simply being okay with being an adventurer, the listener wants to do nothing else but wish them well on their journeys. There Is No Love In Fluorescent Light is a very familiar sounding album, but it’s clear that they’re looking for new inspirations.