Hip To Be Square

So we find ourselves graced with another Montreal band, The Stills, coming out with their sophmore album, "Without Feathers". Their debut album, "Logic will break your heart", came out in 2003 and, unfortunately, I was not introduced to their music at this point in time. Both this album and the latter were released on Vice Records.

So, here I am, hearing The Stills for the first time and I must say, their sound is, well, nice. It's not great, it's not mind blowing and it's not revolutionary, it's nice.

The sound off their first album, from what I've gathered from other bloggers and online journals (Filter and the 'fork), was similar to the sound blowing up at the time. This was Interpol and all the other indie pop bands that seemed to be oozing out of the New York City sidewalks . What does that have to do with this album, well, since I've never heard their previous album, that description doesn't really mean too much to me because really this album is much different in my opinion then that NYC sound. And that would make sense after reading on Stylus Magazine's review of the album that the first guitarist is gone, they added a keyboardist, the drummer (Dave Hamelin) has taken up the guitar parts and the vocals are split more evenly between Tim Fletcher and Dave Hamelin. So if you're expecting The Stills from 2003, my guess would be that you're not going to find them on this album.

So, back to their recent release, it starts out with a soulful beginning. And the songs stay pretty soulful for the first few songs with some organ here and there and Tim and Dave really getting in to the vocals. Very accessible and very easy songs to bob your head to. Then, with Helicopter, they kind of settle things down a bit. This song is one of my favorites off the album. It starts off slow but climbs in volume and eventually breaks away with distortion leaving the listener reeling with energy. Then they really slow things down. I've found that on a few of their slow tracks the vocals make me feel like I'm listening to an off-broadway play's soundtrack that is attempting to be the next Rent.

The albums single comes at track 7, Destroyer. Not particularly my favorite track off the album but the singles rarely are so I'm not the bit surprised that it doesn't stand out to me. The "I will destroy you" chorus, really gets under my skin. Not sure why. Sorry.

All in all this album has it's moments. Not sure if this one will be a hanger (meaning, it's going to hang around for awhile on my iPod) but I'm sure I'll find myself coming back to this album when I want to be in a cheerful mood.

Also, Fader Magazine has found their 2006 live show to be pretty rockin.

Check out a couple tracks below and buy the album, here:

Helicopters
Destroyer