Stars announces new album 'No One is Lost,' fall tour

Canadian indie pop band Stars is back this fall with the seventh full-length album No One is Lost due out on October 14. They have just announced a fall tour in support of the album that will bring them back to the Triangle.

The band will play the Lincoln Theatre in Raleigh on Friday, November 14. Hey Rosetta will open. Tickets are on sale now via Etix for $20.

Check out the song "From the Night" from No One is Lost below.

Stars, Diamond Rings & California Wives rock the Cradle

All photos by Kevin Norris

Canadian indie pop band Stars returned to the Cat's Cradle on Wednesday night to share their latest album The North with their Triangle fans.

The band played a set heavy on the new album, opening with danceable first single "The Theory of Relativity" and they played all but one of the twelve songs during their 20-song set. The crowd belted out the lyrics to the new songs including "Through the Mines" and the fantastic "Hold on When You Get Love and Let Go When You Give It."

The band balanced the new songs with tunes from their catalog, digging as far back as "Elevator Love Letter" from their 2003 album Heart. "Your Ex-Lover is Dead" featured a vigorous crowd singalong that caused big smiles to wash over most of the band.

Win tickets to Stars, Diamond Rings and California Wives at Cat's Cradle

Canadian indie pop band Stars has a new album out this fall, as do both of their tourmates, Diamond Rings and California Wives. The trio will make a stop at Cat's Cradle on Wednesday, September 26, and we have a pair of tickets to giveaway courtesy of California Wives.

For a chance to win, email trianglemusiccontests at gmail dot com with "Stars tickets" in the subject line no later than 3 p.m. on Wednesday, September 19. We will select and notify a winner that afternoon. One entry per person, please.

Tickets to the show are $22 in advance, $24 day of show and are available via Etix. Stream California Wives' song "Purple" below.

Stars announces new album & fall tour

Canadian indie pop band Stars will release their sixth full-length album on September 4 titled The North. The band will hit the road on a big fall tour to support it which will bring them back to Carrboro.

The band will play the Cat's Cradle on Wednesday, September 26. Tickets will go on sale on Friday, July 13, at 10 a.m. via Etix for $22. Each ticket purchased includes a free download of the aforementioned new album The North.

Stream the song "The Theory of Relativity" from The North below. You can download the song HERE if you're willing to share a working email address.

Stars shine at the Cat's Cradle, play new songs

All photos by Kevin Norris

Canadian indie pop band Stars rolled into Cat's Cradle in Carrboro on Wednesday on their way down to Florida for the DeLuna Festival.

The band rocked a set heavy on songs from the band's most recent album The Five Ghosts and also hit a healthy number of tunes from their previous two albums, In Our Bedroom After the War and Set Yourself on Fire.

Stars announces fall tour, returning to Carrboro

Canadian indie pop band Stars released a new collection of demos in June called The Bedroom Demos, and are hitting the road this fall to play a few shows. They played a sold out show at the Cat's Cradle in Carrboro last October and they're coming back.

The band will play the Cradle again on Wednesday, October 12. Tickets are on sale now via etix for $18.

Check out the band's latest music video for "We Don't Want Your Body" from their 2010 album The Five Ghosts below. It features a lot of overly buff, oiled up folks lip syncing and strutting their stuff. It's quite bizarre, but the song fantastic.

Stars announces hefty fall tour, coming back to Carrboro

The Canadian rockers Stars are gearing up to release their new album The Five Ghosts on June 22 and have released the details of their fall tour scheduled which will keep them busy through November.

Among the newly announced dates is a return to the Cat's Cradle on Friday, October 1. Tickets for the show will go on sale Friday, June 25 via etix for $18. A special pre-sale including a digital download of the album, a poster, t-shirt and access to a meet-and-greet will begin on Tuesday, June 22 at youarestars.com.

Stars were last in the Triangle at the Cat's Cradle in October 2007. Check out our review and photos from the show here.

Check out the video for the song "Fixed" from The Five Ghosts below along with the full tour schedule.

Stars frontman pitches a fit about Ben Folds [UPDATE]

Stars frontman Torquil Campbell just posted a little hissy fit in a bulletin from his band's MySpace page railing against Triangle expatriate Ben Folds. Apparently Folds made a rather funny comment about Canadian musician Charles Spearin's new album The Happiness Project calling it "bad spa music." This set Torquill off and he posted the childish rant you see below.

hi guys...well i know i'm gonna regret this, but i can't help myself. I just heard Ben Folds, who many of you prolly have never heard of because you don't waste your time listening to shitty mid nineties m.o.r. lite grunge, calling my friend Charles Spearins' BEAUTIFUL new record "bad spa music" on the CBC. BEN FOLDS! insulting CHARLES SPEARIN! is he fuckin' nuts? you come to our country and insult a national treasure on the radio? CHARLIE SPEARIN????? the most beautiful talented soulful brother in the whole world? a guy who has written some of the most influential, sublime music this side of heaven? WHo has just completed the Happiness Project, one of the most original and uplifting pieces of music i have EVER HEARD? Ben Folds, ladies and gentleman, is an ASSHOLE for dismissing this extraordinary tribute to life and love as "bad spa music". It makes me wanna......well you know.....kick his scrawny, washed up hipster doofus ass....but instead, i encourage you all to write to his myspace (he could use the visits) and imbed charles' music in your message so that every time some refugee from the nineties wants to hear their favourite ben folds ditty, they get charlie instead. i've said it before, and it feels right, so i'll say it again; BEN FOLDS IS AN ASSHOLE.

let the games begin!!!
xo love and hate torq@stars

Geez Torquill. You're in a damn good band but you need to grow up. The strangest part is that he pulls out the "how can you come to Canada and insult a Canadian" card. Really? It also seems that he is unaware that Folds is still a successful artist, as or more successful than Stars.

[UPDATE: The original rant has been removed and Torquil is claiming he didn't write the first one. Here's the text of thew new post.

hello everyone-
we don't know who put up their rant against ben folds here....could have been anyone i guess...but we don't know what the fuck all this is about. We do love charlie spearin....don't really know ben folds work.....anyway, i find it exciting that i dont even have to know whats going on to be contreversial... i am now going to change the password on our myspace....i have to say, whoever you are, you've really got my style down!
wow, torq

Are you buying it? I'm not.]

New Stars video - "The Night Starts Here"

Stars have just released a new video for "The Night Starts Here," sort of. The new video features footage of the band used in the original video that came out a year ago. Both videos can be seen below.

Check out our review and photos of Stars at the Cat's Cradle in October 2007 here.

Stars' latest release the Sad Robots EP is out now.

New video


Old video

Stars set to release 'Sad Robots' on Monday

One of my favorite bands, Montreal's Stars, is gearing up to release a new EP this Monday. Yeah, Monday. The six-track EP titled Sad Robots will feature five new songs as well as live version of the Nightsongs track "Going, Going, Gone."

The EP will be available on Monday, September 1 as a digital download exclusively via sadrobots.ca. Physical copies will only be available at Stars shows. Check out a list of North American tour dates at the bottom of the post. Sadly, no Triangle or North Carolina dates are on the books.

This lack of the usual notice prior to releasing new music is not a new thing for Stars. They released their most recent full-length record, In Our Bedroom After the War, digitally days after it was completed. The physical release came a few months later.

Check out our review and photos of Stars' sold out show at Cat's Cradle last October here.

[Update: The CD version of Sad Robots will also be available via sadrobots.ca. The CD will ship on September 16.]

Sad Robots track list:
01 Maintenance Hall, 4am
02 A Thread Cut With a Carving Knife
03 Undertow
04 Going, Going, Gone (live)
05 14 Forever
06 Sad Robot

Stars tour dates:
09-17 Northampton, MA - Pearl Street
09-18 Providence, RI - Lupo's Heartbreak Hotel
09-19 Philadelphia, PA - Trocadero
09-20 New York, NY - Terminal 5
09-22 Columbus, OH - Milo Arts
09-23 Newport, KY - Southgate House
09-24 Chicago, IL - The Vic
09-25 St. Louis, MO - The Pageant
09-26 Lawrence, KS - The Granada
09-28 Austin, TX - Zilker Park (Austin City Limits Music Festival)
10-01 Los Angeles, CA - Avalon
10-02 Anaheim, CA - House of Blues
10-03 Santa Barbara, CA - UC Santa Barbara
10-04 Santa Cruz, CA - Rio Theatre
10-06 San Francisco, CA - The Fillmore
10-07 Eugene, OR - WOW Hall
10-08 Portland, OR - Wonder Ballroom
10-09 Seattle, WA - Showbox Theatre
10-10 Bellingham, WA - Western Washington University
10-29 Fredericton, New Brunswick - SUB Ballroom
10-30 Moncton, New Brunswick - The Manhattan Club
10-31 Charlottestown, Prince Edward Island - The Wave
11-01 Halifax, Nova Scotia - The Marquee Club
11-03 St. John's, Newfoundland - Club One

Stars shine in Carrboro

It's not often that a show truly blows me away, but Stars' show at Cat's Cradle Friday night beat the odds.

As Norwegian singer-songwriter Magnet (aka Even Johansen) took the stage to open the show, the Cradle was already at about half capacity. Magnet's short set was full of folky, soulful tunes accompanied by samples and a lot of reverb. The solo set sounded very different than the full band arrangements on his albums. The highlight of the set was the song "Lonely No More" from Magnet's latest album, The Simple Life. Stars frontman Torquil Campbell watched a portion of the set from the sound board and really was into the set. It's good to see members of a headlining band truly enjoying their opening acts' set.

Get your zzz's while you can

Looking at the calendar for this week, I get the feeling I won't be getting a lot of sleep. But that's OK because there's a great run of shows coming through the area in the next six days.

Robbers on High Street and Great Northern are playing Local 506 Tuesday, The Broken West will be there Thursday, Stars and Magnet are playing Cat's Cradle on Friday (while Guster and Avett Brothers are over on NCSU's campus — and trust me that was a tough call), and finally, Annuals, The Never and Manchester Orchestra will play Cat's Cradle Saturday while Matt Pond PA is down the road at Local 506 (still haven't made up my mind on that one).

Seriously. That's a lot of great shows in a short period of time. So join me by getting out of the house this week and enjoying some great music and the magnificent fall weather that only seems to appear once the sun has set!

So I've told you my plans — what show are you going to this week?

Cradle booking big falls shows

The Cat's Cradle booking agent(s) have been busy lately and it seems to be paying off. There are a ton of big acts coming this fall. Here's a little info on a few.

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Meat Puppets will play the Cradle on Monday, September 10 supporting their new album, Rise to Your Knees. This will be the band's first release since 2000's Golden Lies. What's truly notable about Rise to Your Knees is that it will be the band's first album since 1995's No Joke! that will feature both Curt and Cris Kirkwood. For those who don't know the Kirkwood brothers, they were the two long-haired guys playing with Nirvana during their legendary Unplugged set.

Rise to Your Knees comes out next Tuesday, July 17. Tickets for the September 10 show at the Cradle are on sales now via etix.com for $15.

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Peter Bjorn & John will hit the Cradle on Tuesday, September 11 with Merge artist The Clientele opening. The band is out supporting last year's release, Writer's Block. The group had a small hit with the catchy tune "Young Folks" which has kept album sales steady.

Prices are little steep for this one. Tickets for the September 11 show are $23 and are currently available via etix.com.

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Montreal indie-pop band Stars will play the Cradle on Friday, October 26. The band will be supporting their fourth album, In Our Bedroom After the War, due out on September 25. The CD and vinyl versions will be released in September, but you can buy it on iTunes now [click the iTunes logo below that will take you straight to the album page]. Check out a free mp3 of "The Night Starts Here" from the new album (click song title and save as).

Tickets for the October 26 show will be available on etix.com on Thursday, July 19.



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Canada's very own indie superstar twin sisters, Tegan and Sara will play the Cradle on Saturday, November 17. The girls have a new album, The Con, due out on July 24 and already have a bunch of sold-out shows on the books in the US, Canada and the UK. It'd be a good idea to get your tickets early for this one.

Tickets for the November 17 show go on sale this Saturday, July 14 via etix.com for $18.

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These are just a few of the bands the Cat's Cradle have booked in the coming months. Don't forget to check out the Triangle Music Calendar regularly for show updates (updated daily). Also check out our post about the Interpol show at Disco Rodeo ("Interpol announce tour, stop at Disco Rodeo"). It has been updated with ticket info.