A Song Is A Weapon. So goes the title of a track from The North – the latest stunning offering from Canada’s best kept secret indie institution – STARS. And with those fighting words, STARS are back, having never gone away. Over the course of more than a decade together, STARS have consistently proven themselves adept at producing incisively sharp, beautifully orchestrated pop music. Their sixth album, The North, is no exception. In many ways, it is their finest record to date – a culmination of all they have learned and lost; a record of what it is to love today, of how to live a life in music. “This is the five of us attacking each song and turning it into something that is all of ours,” says Amy Millan, who shares lead vocals with Torquil Campbell.

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For many people, it is 2004’s Set Yourself On Fire that defined what STARS truly had to offer. The political, honest and heartfelt songwriting, always twisted in the dual themes of sex and death, appealed to fans in its directness and sincerity. The North is an insistent return to this top form, in no small part due to the band’s decision to revisit the same formula that made Set Yourself On Fire a hit: to co-produce the record themselves and entrust the mix once again to the talents of engineer Tony Hoffer (Beck, Temper Trap.) “Tony gave us the record we had dreamed of in our heads,” says drummer Patty McGee. “Chris (Seligman, the band’s keyboardist) and I would drive around L.A. every evening after the day’s session, with the top down, and realize how lucky we were that this had all come together, that after all this time, it was still coming together.”

“Musically, thematically and lyrically, The North is the essential distillation of everything we’ve been working on for a long time,” adds Campbell. The politics are still there too. “The title of the record is about an idea of the north that is being torn apart by Harper’s (Canada’s Prime Minister) corporate greed. It’s also a nod both to where we are from and the kind of music that has influenced us.” And STARS have influenced some themselves. Chillwave and all manner of orchestral pop that abounds today owe a debt to STARS. With The North, the group are laying claim to rare ground. Twelve years deep, they are making it clear that they are a generational band, a band that will still be here long after other more fashionable acts have faded and a band that without any hype has become one of the most influential and respected acts from North of America. The North finds STARS older, not wiser, still fighting and loving; still making music because now, more than ever, it is in their blood; it is all they know how to do. STARS have survived attacks and success, trends and life; death and drama both. They present here, in The North, plainly and honestly, a document that speaks moments to decades, inches to cascades. Listen with an open heart. There are rewards in song, always. Here, they count.