Stars are, clockwise from top left, Chris Seligman, Evan Cranley, Pat McGee, Amy Millan and Torquil Campbell. They hit the Mod Club in Toronto this weekend.

Set Yourself On Fire, the third album from Montreal's Stars, is deceptively light, sweet, airy and poppy at first listen -- maybe the kind of album that's pleasant but soon disappears from your mind.

But by the second or third listen, you'll probably find yourself as addicted as I am by its intoxicating melodies and wry stories of love and frustration, relationship ups and downs, even a hate letter to Bush and bin Laden. Big and lush, offsetting male and female vocals with strings and guitars, Set Yourself On Fire is like Morrissey without self-pity, or New Order with more heart and soul and humour.

The band -- singer/keyboardist Torquil Campbell, singer/guitarist Amy Millan, bassist Evan Cranley, keyboardist Chris Seligman and drummer Pat McGee -- pride themselves on their closeness, which was tested when they snuggled up in the Eastern Townships last winter to write and record the album, not to mention frolic, toboggan and drink a bit.

"We just started hammering away, working 16 hours a day," Campbell recalls. "When I say work, though, it depends what you mean by work. Let's say we were involved in the process all day.

"When you remove yourself from your home and regular life, it's like challenging yourself to a match. It also helped us get completely involved with each other, which helped make it very immediate and instinctual."

The album features lots of strings and keyboards, but still manages to sound intimate, with the vocals up front and the lyrics discernible. "We thought it would be more straight-ahead rock 'n' roll, but we can't do that -- we're always going, 'It'd be nice to have an oboe here,'" says Campbell. "We did want to make a big, sprawling, epic record. But our engineer, Tony Hoffer, knew that by taking stuff out he could actually make it sound bigger with less in it.

"It's weird, but there's only so much the ear can take before you start to saturate, and it actually shrinks. So we tried to maximize things without going over the top."

Stars play the Mod Club Saturday and Sunday.