The Stills

If I was lazy, I'd just up and call 'em "Strokiohead", though they seem a bit more nuanced than that. They're decent enough in an '80s goth-pop way. I am in the position of having to write 800 words about 'em in the next couple weeks, so I should probably think of more substantial stuff than that a bit later.

(I'm actually hearing them as "Radiohead minus most of the things I dislike about Radiohead, plus RIFF ACTION")

There's two really good songs on the album, one of which was already released on a single earlier this year. Seek out "Still In Love Song" and "Fevered" on your p2p of choice and then be done with them.

the opening few cuts of the LP are astounding, and i can understand why the a-and-r people were shitting themselves: the Strokes crossed with Coldplay, plus swathes of U2 and Doves. I don't know about the Radiohead connection, though, nate... this isn't very tortured, dystopian/fantasmagoric, or peculiarly textured...

i've only really heard the first EP but "still in love song" pushes all the right buttons for me. i like 'em.

Well, it's his voice, I guess.

I sort of understand the Thom Yorke comparison. I hear the same thing in Paloalto -- most similar to Pablo Honey-era Radiohead.

Writing about this band has suddenly made me like them a lot less. They seem like one of those good-on-the-surface groups that sound a lot less interesting when you put on the Critic Hat.

Here's the tentative first paragraph. I'm unsure as to whether this is good of awful:

"The Stills have an album out. It’s called Logic Will Break Your Heart. Chances are you’ll be hearing quite a bit about ‘em in the next few months. Chances are you’re also wondering who the Stills even are, which is okay, because I am too. What I do know so far: The Stills are from Montreal, though they spent their time leading up to the recording of this album in NYC. There are four of them (guitar guitar bass drums). Two of them -- vocalist/guitarist Tim Fletcher and drummer Dave Hamelin -- bought a four-track machine a couple years back from a friend that needed some cash in a hurry. That’s a win-win situation right there: someone is able to pay his dope dealer or his student loan officer, while someone else is able to realize their dreams of record-making and demo-cutting. “A likeminded songwriting aesthetic ensued”, quoth the band’s website, though it is unclear whether they mean likeminded between Fletcher and Hamelin or between The Stills and every other band in New York."

erm. Good or awful. Or goodness borne of awfulness.

I see where you're going, but your first graph is really choppy. What's your thesis? That they sound like NY bands? Manchester bands? NY bands masquerading as Manchester bands?

That they sound like an indistinct entity (perhaps a ghost) masquerading as NY bands masquerading as Manchester bands. I can't really glean much of anything from this music, and considering how uninformative their bio is, it's all I can do to convince myself this band actually exists and isn't a figment of my active (but not active enough in this case) imagination.

I don't rate them. They bored me when I saw them at Reading (and I'm a huge Interpol fan so I expected to like them) and the two songs I've heard (including Still In Love Song) haven't done much for me either.

Anyhow:

1) That's not my first paragraph anymore. My first paragraph is now basically about how the first thing that baffles me about the Stills and their general nonentity-ness is their name: "Do they remain quiet and motionless? Are they mere static images culled from a moving picture? Are they essential in the processing of alcoholic beverages? Do they really do much of anything?" The old "first paragraph" follows shortly after and actually goes somewhere.

2) About the Yorke comparison, it now seems to me that what Fletcher's voice does is emulate what it would be like if Julian Casablancas actually sang through Thom's throat. Very similar inflections and draaaaaawn out syllables.

3) This line may not make the final cut, but: "Conspiracy theory side note: they’re on Atlantic’s Vice records; Vice moved from Montreal to NYC; Vice editor Gavin McInnes seems to fancy himself a modern-day snotty provocateur Malcolm McLaren -- I’m not jumping to conclusions, but..."

4) Other bands and musicians I've wound up comparing the Stills to in my so-far-700-word unfinished draft: Interpol, Echo and the Bunnymen, Factory (the label, in general), Coldplay, Howard Devoto (one of the songs has a vaguely Magaziney guitar), Radiohead, the Cure, the Strokes, who knows what else. It's impossible for me to hear them as their own individual stylistic cohesive rock band unit, even though it was easy for me to hear the Strokes as the Strokes about a week after buying Is This It.

5) Hopefully this article will help me improve on my "writing about boring yet insufficiently awful music" skills.

i love this album.

Seconded.

saw them live on conan last friday night and they were good as well. I really love "Of Montreal".

I interviewed them for VH1.com. It's not posted yet. Tim Fletcher likes to talk, thank God. Really nice guy. But his cell phone kept disconnecting because they were somewhere along the Canadian border in a van. I love "Gender Bombs" and yes, "Of Montreal" is excellent.

cool, post the link when its up!

What's the name of the Magazine-ish one? I dismissed the Stills as a more boring Interpol (like, an uninspired indie band that sounds a bit like postpunk here and there) based on the two I heard but I imagine that would be interesting.

Biggest guilty pleasure of 2003.

this album sounds better now than ever before. why?

funny you say that cutty, i love it now more than ever, and a friend who thought they were boring saw em in Tokyo last week, and now loves 'em.

I first heard most of those songs as 4-track demos with the drummer singing and I immediately liked them. When the album was released, I was disappointed with how glossy and overproduced it sounded. So I guess with time, you get past the production and (for some people who are bothered by this) image, you have a collection of pretty good songs that seemed underwhelming at first.

i like them, singer sounds just like aaron perrino minus screams.

i'm totally not supposed to say this but i had some drinks, but dudes totally broke up... or at least greg totally left the band. now those unicorns fools are tryig to get him on their "islands" thing they're doing

Logic was a definitely guilty pleasure, but the new stuff... eh. You can hear the new song on their myspace page.

The new change in sound doesn't seem so much of a progression as genre-jumping for the sake of it and the drummer singing is, well, it will maybe please some but I hate that dripping indie smug drawl. I'll wait to hear the rest before dismissing them, but that song just annoys me.