The Stills
“It’s just never what it was” – “In the Beginning” from The Stills Without Feathers
Rock’n’roll is like life. And life? That’s like high school. You leap in, seething with hormones, ambition and crazy ideas, giddy with the freedom of your new environment. And what do you get? Cliques. Conformity. The world hears you and says, “That’s fine. Here’s your pigeonhole. Now don’t ever change.” But what’s the point of being in a rock’n’roll band if you can’t flout all the rules and expectations?
Faced with the task of following up an out-of-the-box success, Montreal’s Stills stared that question down, hard. With every band and its hairdresser still scrambling for the last skinny spot on the ‘80s bandwagon, the Stills have taken the mathematical, melancholy poise of their debut, Logic Will Break Your Heart, and blown up their pop equation. Presenting: the most dramatic and daring musical re-genesis between debut and sophomore albums in recent memory.
“What need would we fill if we put out Logic again?” asks singer/guitarist Dave Hamelin. “The world is saturated with that stuff.”
Instead, he and the band posed a riskier question: “What am I not hearing around me?” Without Feathers answers with a big, organic rock sound that challenges preconceptions in two camps – the biz, and the audience. And why not? The Stills have already faced the ultimate challenge in a young rock band’s career: they have reinvented themselves.
As Hamelin says, “We stupidly figured we had nothing to lose.”
That’s the way they’d played it since the get-go. Born in Montreal in 2000, they’d fled the comforts of a then-sleeping scene and relocated to New York. Galvanized by possibility, they heard a sound coalescing around them. “Still In Love Song,” with Oliver Crowe’s disco-popping bassline and a chiming atmosphere, would become one of 2003’s instantly memorable singles, the Yearbook Anthem for a hundred thousand dreamers. The album paid out on the promise: crystalline guitar, Fletcher’s sensual, yearning tenor, the quicksilver sound of a band meshing with the zeitgeist. It took the ambient paranoia of the age and fused it with something hopeful, romantic.
And what do you get next? Conformity.
“Suddenly, every single band that opens for you says ‘We’re into Joy Division’,” Fletcher says.
“We thought our record had come out too late,” says keyboardist Liam O’Neil. “It actually came out too early.” A dozen dozen bands later, and the ‘80s revival threatens to outlast the ‘80s themselves. The Stills took a hard look in the mirror, and then cocked their collective inner hear to the sound of change.
Admittedly, they had their reasons. 2004 was the Stills’ breakthrough year. And it nearly broke them. The demands of touring, and a growing discomfort with being labeled part of an artificial “scene” brought pressures to bear.
Perhaps one show set the tone of triumph and absurdity. The band is playing London’s 100 Club that March. In attendance: a buzzing crowd, and the president of Warner Records. Big moment, right? Fletcher takes the mic to find he’s lost his voice. The president? “He’s never seen another show.”
From there, despite the undeniable high points – hit UK singles “Lola Stars and Stripes” and “Changes Are No Good,” rave reviews, touring throughout Europe, Iceland, Japan – there was turmoil: depression, breakups, band feuds. Girlfriends were lost. Hamelin threatened to leave. Guitarist Greg Paquet ultimately did (amicably). Then, one night on the road with Broken Social Scene, the band heard their touring pianist Liam O’Neil play a half-hour solo in the hotel bar and run through a mini-history of rock classicism. A light came on.
O’Neil joined on a permanent basis and the Stills reworked…everything. Hamelin dropped his drumsticks and assumed co-lead vocals with Fletcher.
But hang on a minute…isn’t this the band that sang “Changes Are No Good”? Fletcher laughs. “I think a lot of bands that make changes this radical just…disappear,” he says. “But when you think of it – the Clash, the Beatles, Radiohead, U2. I think it’s good to change in a tight time frame.”
“So many of those great songs – you can forget who wrote them,” O’Neil says. “They just sound like songs that had to be written.”
Fletcher is succinct. “A return to simplicity. Fuck the effects, plug in and feel something.”
So feel this: Without Feathers opens with the chugging rhythm of “In the Beginning” until the Hammond B3 blows out the sides of the song. “The Mountain,” an anthem, ups the ante: this is a statement, a reaction. There is the expansive ballad “She’s Walking Out,” the bottomless stoicism and stark piano of “In The End.” “Helicopters” skips along melancholically, and “Oh Shoplifter” invites in a Canadian posse – Sam Roberts, Jason Collett, Broken Social Scene – for street-corner handclaps and gang vocals. The irresistible vocal hook of “It Takes Time,” the rise’n’shine horns of “Destroyer,” and a perfect duet with Metric’s Emily Haines’ in “Baby Blues” deliver what Neil Young might have called the “ragged glory” of a pop-rock band. Gone are the boys. This album has stubble.
But no feathers. The title is a tribute to Woody Allen’s mordant comedy classic, a band favourite. It is also a pointed reference to the Logic cover, with all those feathers floating down. “You always want to be who you think you are,” Hamelin says. The Stills have made the music of that innate ambition. They’ve become the band they knew they could be.
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