Pitchfork

Now we loved Stars' 2004 LP Set Yourself on Fire just fine as it was, a lush palette of heartfelt heartbreak anthems. But we've got to admit, this sounds pretty damn cool: whilst we await the Fire followup (due in fall 2007, if you trust the band's website), Stars have invited a cadre of Friends to recreate the Canadian pop romantics' best LP to date.

Do You Trust Your Friends? (first discussed waaaay back in June 2005 and then last summer) arrives May 22 on Arts & Crafts and is a track-for-track "renovation" (thus deemed by the press release) of Set Yourself on Fire. The Friends in question? A fairly trustworthy lot, many of them A&C affiliates: Junior Boys, Metric, Final Fantasy, Broken Social Scene's Kevin Drew (with Camouflage Nights) and Apostle of Hustle, the Dears, the Russian Futurists, the Stills, Minotaur Shock, Montag, Young Galaxy, Jason Collett, and the Most Serene Republic.

Each takes a stab at a Fire favorite, sequenced exactly the same as the original album (with those dastardly Dears breaking album centerpiece "What I'm Trying to Say" into a two-part mega-jam). You can still check out Junior Boys' reworking of "Sleep Tonight" over in Forkcast.

Stars themselves, meanwhile, "have been feverishly working on their follow-up to Set Yourself On Fire," according to their website, at Vancouver's Warehouse Studios.

In related news, Stars' Amy Millan swings down to SXSW in support of last year's solo foray, Honey From the Tombs. And she's hardly the only Star off in sideprojectland: Torquil Campbell's Memphis dropped A Little Place in the Wilderness last year in Canada. That album finally gets a U.S. release March 27 via Montreal's Good Fences Records.

Do You Trust Your Friends?:

01 Your Ex-Lover Is Dead [Final Fantasy]
02 Set Yourself on Fire [Montag]
03 Ageless Beauty [The Most Serene Republic]
04 Reunion [Jason Collett]
05 The Big Fight [Minotaur Shock]
06 What I'm Trying to Say Pt. 1 [The Dears]
07 What I'm Trying to Say Pt. 2 [The Dears]
08 One More Night [Apostle of Hustle]
09 Sleep Tonight [Junior Boys]
10 The First Five Times [The Russian Futurists]
11 He Lied About Death [Metric]
12 Celebration Guns [Camouflage Nights with Kevin Drew]
13 Soft Revolution [The Stills]
14 Calendar Girl [Young Galaxy]

Amy Millan:

03-15 Austin, TX - Emo's Jr. (SXSW)
03-16 Austin, TX - Habana Calle 6 Annex (SXSW)
03-16 Austin, TX - Red Eyed Fly (SXSW)
05-04 Toronto, Ontario - Massey Hall