Stars ignite on stage

As Stars took the stage for their concert at a full Variety Playhouse, the lights dimmed, the digitized music started and the stage lights began to rotate around the venue. One could expect the band to begin a glitzy show full of visual effects. Instead, as the lights came on, the most interesting visual was already spread across the stage: bouquets of flowers. Attached to every speaker, amp and microphone stand on the stage, flowers decorated an otherwise ordinary-looking setup. Lead singer Torquil Campbell walked on the stage with the rest of the band, taking the mic and declaring, "We're Stars from Montreal." He then threw some of the flowers into an already-cheering crowd.

The band immediately launched into a new song from their new album, In Our Bedroom After the War, playing "Take Me to the Riot." The song is one of the group's signature duet-type songs. Guitarist/lead singer Amy Millan and Campbell sang off of each other, resulting in the band's best sound. They continued to play the duets, reaching their peak when they launched into one of the band's most popular songs, "Your Ex-Lover is Dead."

The show was not without its visual glitz, though. At one point, during "The Ghost of Genova Heights," Campbell disappeared off the stage and the lights came down. Singing back stage, he emerged halfway through the song with a jacket full of lights, literally glowing on the stage.

The band played a set that saw songs from only their three most recent albums, mostly focused on their last two. While the audience welcomed songs from their most recent album, they gave the biggest reactions when the band played songs from Set Yourself on Fire. Songs from Heart, like crowd favorites "Elevator Love Letter" and "Look Up," still made it into the set, but were far outnumbered by the more recent songs.

In between songs, Campbell told the crowd how much he and the band appreciated the fan's support. He expressed his amazement that so many fans would spend time and money to see the band, constantly expressing his humility. The other members of the band remained relatively quiet, although at one point, Millan decided to crowd surf during one of the songs. The band threw flowers into the crowd whenever any member had an opportunity to do so, usually to a mob of people trying to grab at least a souvenir from the show.

The show was not without its miscues. "Sleep Tonight" sounded nothing like its album counterpart, turning the once emotional and mellow song into a hardened and overly digitized sound. Their set-closer, "In Our Bedroom After the War," had Campbell channeling Les Miserables and practically marching for some sort of revolution. The band chanted "After the war!" as though it were a true call to arms and not just a song. It was overly dramatic, even for the band.

Though the band did go off, they came back for a particularly long encore that even gave a shout-out to Death Cab for Cutie by covering one of their songs. They closed the encore with "Calendar Girl." As the people filtered out of the show, adoring fans gushed over the performance and it was obvious that Stars had done justice to their songs.