Mortality was on band Stars' mind when recording new LP, No One Is Lost

Torquil Campbell gets on people’s nerves. The Stars frontman once interrupted a Dublin concert with a screed about child abuse and has merrily waged Twitter feuds with indie pop kindred, The Magnetic Fields, and scenester bible, Pitchfork.

In view of this track record, you might expect Campbell to be a handful. Actually, face to face, the singer is sweet and thoughtful.

He is also serious when he says outrageousness is part of his job. He’s the leader of a rock band: he’s supposed to shoot his mouth off.

“It’s in the manual,” he says.

“You are meant to say annoying things. It’s a pity it doesn’t happen anymore.

“The internet is such a self-reflexive trap: people are terrified of saying something they are going to have to apologise for later.

“We live in a very conservative age. Expressing yourself with any violence or passion is regarded as outré, a bit over-the-top.

“Of course it is: I’m in a f**king band. If you want a nuanced analysis, go talk to a political scientist. I’m an idiot in a pop group.”

Campbell’s acid-tongued persona is at odds with the music he makes with Stars.

From the underdog end of the indie spectrum, across seven albums the Canadians have blended New Order synth pop with Belle and Sebastian doomed romanticism.

Though not stunningly original, their sound is wildly catchy and, if you are disposed, quite irresistible.

That is particularly true of new LP, No One Is Lost.

Recorded at a Montreal studio that adjoins a nightclub, the record splices the urgency of the dance-floor with middle-age ennui (none of the band will see 40 again).

The title, says Campbell, is a dark sort of joke: we will all die one day, so, of course, we are all lost.

Mortality, he says, was on his mind going into the studio, because Stars’ manager had been recently diagnosed with cancer.

“He was just 27,” Campbell says.

“With that news weighing on us, we decided to make the record in a spirit of hope. There was no other way of moving forward. We reached that conclusion together.

“Owen was so brave and strong and now it looks like he has the cancer beaten.

“In the moment, we were terrified. No One Is Lost – to me, that is a lie. But we live in blind hope.

“That’s the great thing about pop music: you listen to [The Kinks’] ‘Waterloo Sunset’ or [The Smiths’] ‘Bigmouth Strikes Again’ and, for those three minutes, it feels as if you are going to live forever.”

Born in Sheffield, Campbell was nine when he moved to Toronto with his family and still sometimes feels adrift amid the endless positivity of North American society.

Acting was his first professional love. In his early 20s, he relocated to New York, notching up parts in shows such as Law and Order and Sex In The City.

“It will be in my obituary and that is what is so f**king depressing,” Campbell told me in a previous interview.

“My six hours on the set of Sex and the City – with one line – is going to supersede everything else I’ve done in my life.”

“Being an actor in New York was the opposite of glamorous. It was days and days of unemployment. Being an actor is fucking hard, man.”

Perhaps it’s just as well he has turned his hand to music.

Stars play Opium Rooms in Dublin on Saturday