Stars over the Hillside (Sunday 2010)

Both humbled and incredibly happy to be closing Hillside Festival's main stage Stars put on a patently romantic set to spread a last dose of love through the crowd before we all had to return to reality. They came out under a Five Ghosts poster, a departure from the flower-strewn stage that has been their signature for some years now. Despite a fifteen-minute late sound check the sound was blatantly awful off the start with mics being off completely among other problems, but these were cleared up by the end of opener We Don't Want Your Body so the performance could become the focal point.

While pointing a spotlight back on us Torq proclaimed Hillside to be his favourite festival, a claim that is backed by his history of playing it as Memphis (2007), Hillside Inside with Stars (2009) and of course Stars opening for the Arcade Fire on this very stage in 2005. Amy was in great form in a sparkling dress and Cranley rocked some (hilariously) epic rock power-stances with his bass guitar. Most of the set was tit-for-tat Five Ghosts track for the usual suspects of older songs. A version of Going, Going, Gone had slower elements from the Nightsongs original, but brought more to life like the Sad Robots version. When Amy began singing over Chris' simple piano it really set the mood for a beautiful rendition of Midnight Coward.

With quiet hours looming over us the band stood poised for their final song and Amy said "You know what's coming" only to break into a less-than-stellar new song that signified to me that they'd be back. And they were, with the best Stars encore of the seven or eight times I've seen them. A touching rendition of the ultimate Stars lost-love duet, Your Ex-Lover is Dead was followed by a plea for One More Night. Sadly there were no more nights as another year of the Hillside Festival, dripping in all of the emotions supplied by an excellent Stars set, came to a gorgeous close.

[Set included Ageless Beauty, Take Me to the Riot, Elevator Love Letter and from The Five Ghosts Fixed, I Died So I Could Haunt You, Wasted Daylight, and The Passenger but unfortunately not Dead Hearts.]