Amy Millan of Stars and Broken Social Scene, courtesy.

This story originally appeared in the Oakland Tribune.

Montreal singer Amy Millan has two theories about why her hometown is now a den of great indie music artists. The sweet-voiced chanteuse’s first theory is based on two climates. 

“I think it’s because they have such pretty girls here. In the summertime, there’s so many girls out in the street that there’s nothing to do besides sit out in the patio and watch them all walk by (for inspiration),” said Millan, a member of Montreal indie bands Stars and Broken Social Scene and a solo artist. “It gets very, very cold, so there’s not much to do except for stay home and play music in the wintertime.” 

That may be one reason why artists from the Quebec city have exploded in number and popularity the past several years — the Arcade Fire played several successful shows in the Bay Area this year. Broken Social Scene member Leslie Feist (of the iPod and Starbucks ads and the catchy “1234” single) performs tonight in San Francisco. BSS lead singer Kevin Drew played the Fillmore two weeks ago. And Of Montreal — whose members are actually from Georgia but whose lead singer once dated a woman from Montreal — performs in the city next week. 

Stars, a melodic quintet led by Millan and singer-songwriter Torquil Campbell, will also perform Tuesday and Wednesday at Bimbo’s 365 Club. 

Millan’s second theory about the boon of musical artists from Montreal is based on friendships. 

“I think we started out people who liked to hang out with one another and play music,” she said. “Broken Social Scene (a Canadian musical collective made up of about 20 musicians) was a group of friends who would get together — it was the way we socialized. We would get together and go to the basement and write music. That’s also how Stars met.” 

Stars — comprised of Campbell, who also plays the trumpet, Amy Millan, keyboardist-songwriter-French horn player Chris Seligman, bassist-trombonist Evan Cranley and drummer Pat McGee — has a lush, narrative sound. The pop band is powered by the chemistry and tension between singers Millan and Campbell. 

It was started in 2001 by Seligman and Campbell, a Canadian stage and television actor who has appeared in the U.S. in “Sex and the City” and “Law & Order.” 

As the two began creating what would become the band’s first album, “Nightsongs,” they decided to hire musicians to record the album and play the songs live. Millan and Cranley, whom Campbell knew as friends and played with in Broken Social Scene, were obvious picks. 

“We liked each other so much and couldn’t get enough of each other — so we became a band,” Millan said. 

McGee was added prior to recording the band’s breakthrough third record, “Set Yourself On Fire.” 

From the very beginning, the group was based on a juxtaposition of the beautiful and the ugly — worldly things. It started with the name. 

“Stars — that word can conjure up two different images,” Millan said. “One is the unbelievably inexplicable beautiful things in the sky, and the other one is the ridiculous, mundane word for somebody who might be a celebrity. It’s the juxtaposition of these two things. And that is pop music; it’s both ridiculous and incredibly profound.” 

The group’s new album, “In Our Bedroom After the War,” was released in July and is meant to be different things to different people. It’s both a commentary on the world and on personal relationships. 

The title’s ambiguity about the war is intentional. 

`It’s all of them: the wars with your family, the wars with your friends, the wars with your lovers, the war with yourself,” Millan said. “It refers to them all, depending on what day it is for you.”

The album reads like the story of a relationship, starting with “The Beginning After the End,” a synth-led instrumental song that ends with a poem: “All the blood and the treasure/ and the losing it all/ the time that we wasted and the place where we fall/ will we wake in the morning and know what it was for/ up in our bedroom after the war.”

It continues with the upbeat “The Night Starts Here,” and reaches a climactic boiling point with the low-key “Personal,” where Campbell and Millan tell different sides of the story of two people meeting through a personals ad.

The rest of the album feels like two people trying to recover from a fight, with a fitting resolution in the title track, a piano-driven ballad.

Through it all, Campbell and Millan exchange lyrics about life and love. Sometimes their conversations are loving, other times they are confrontational.

Amy Millan said the tension between the two singers also is intended.
“It’s an asset to use two voices and tell two different sides of the story,” she said. “It’s something we can do because there are two singers. The goal is always to include each other as much as possible.”

Millan and Campbell’s goal is to tackle serious and ugly subjects and turn them into “something beautiful,” she said. And although there may be dozens of ways to read the album, Millan said the band’s message through all of them is the same: “It’s all going to be OK.”

Follow editor Roman Gokhman at Twitter.com/RomiTheWriter.