Stars

Before this date, the Stars had been away from Italy for a full eight years, and from Bologna for ten. On one hand, you might think absence breeds anticipation, so a comeback would be bound to draw a big crowd; on the other, people tend to forget about bands, especially given how fast new ones keep popping up, so you could equally imagine a long-awaited return passing by largely unnoticed. In the case of Stars, those earlier Italian dates had coincided with the promotion of albums that received nothing but positive feedback, which can't really be said of their last three records. In practice, the Covo turns out to be fairly packed: it's not a sellout, but a good number of people have shown up for this show.

From a technical standpoint, the live set impresses for two main reasons: the ability to rework the songs compared to their studio versions, without distorting them but almost always bringing something different to the table, and a beautifully structured setlist. On the first point, a few choices really stand out: the orgy of sound that bursts in during the closing section of opener "From The Night"; the beefed-up sound of "Ageless Beauty"; a guitar pushed well to the fore, with an almost post-rock attitude, on "Dead Hearts"; a heavy, martial rhythm, deliberately at odds with the rest of the song's structure, on "Midnight Coward". The songs - these as much as all the others, none excluded - gain extra sparkle and vitality, and prove perfectly suited to fully capturing the attention of everyone down in front of the stage. Sure, on a couple of occasions the low end overwhelms the mix a bit too much, which isn't pleasant to hear, but those really are just a couple of moments within an otherwise flawless, gripping and thoroughly successful performance.

As for the setlist, the way the songs were grouped together was a great idea: the show opens almost exclusively with the band's most danceable material, to give the crowd a sense of lightness and get them in the mood to move and join in, with the exception of the aforementioned "Ageless Beauty," one of their best-known and most beloved songs, placed second specifically to put everyone at ease right away. Then, after a particularly well-received "Hold On When You Get Love And Let Go When You Leave It," with half the room jumping in unison, came two or three quieter songs, giving people a chance to catch their breath, before the pace picked back up again - though this time not necessarily with dance tracks, but with material that was a bit more sonically refined. The finale returned to dancefloor territory with a particularly irresistible "No One Is Lost," during which everyone, musicians and audience alike, let themselves go almost without restraint.

The human side of things shouldn't be overlooked either - namely the band's ability to entertain the crowd and connect with them beyond the strictly musical side of the performance. The two singers, Torquil Campbell and Amy Millan, are the ones tasked with talking to the audience, but the rest of the band also made clear, in their own way, how much they appreciated the warm welcome they received after so many years. The sense of sincerity in the two singers' voices as they expressed their astonishment and gratitude for the applause and participation is unmistakable: you often hear artists say things from the stage like "we're so happy to be back here" or "we love playing in Italy, the people are so cool," but here it was clear to everyone that Stars were speaking from the heart - and so the crowd below, who had waited all these years, could only respond with even more enthusiastic applause and increasingly wild jumping and dancing.

And then there's that one song, one of the finest pop songs of the last 15 years. I'm talking, of course, about “Your Ex-Lover Is Dead”, played just before the encore, which left everyone shaking with emotion. Here the band doesn't rework the song – that would have been almost sacrilegious – but Torquill and Amy turn the microphones towards the crowd and ask everyone to sing along to the song's final words together: “I’m not sorry I left you, I’m not sorry, it’s over, I’m not sorry, there’s nothing to say. I’m not sorry, there’s nothing to say”. The singalong is deafening, and it instantly becomes one of those moments that imprints itself on the heart of everyone who was there, destined to linger for a long time.

“It's already album/show of the year” is the most overused phrase among music fans in January. But if someone said it about this show, they had good reason to.

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