who killed the stills?

Public Mag - Volume 04, Summer 2006

Message boards are alit, chat rooms are ablather, critics are aghast: somebody killed The Stills.

But this is no case for the cops; hell, it’s not even a case for Colombo. The Stills killed themselves, simply so they could be reborn.

And why not? Would you wanna be compared to Interpol the rest of your life?
Harken back all the way to 2003 and a little longplayer entitled Logic Will Break Your Heart. A nifty collection some very catchy tunes, it put The Stills atop all the Must-Watch lists. It also put The Stills in everyone’s ears: Listeners of a

The Stills atop all the age got flashbacks, newbies got to go where they’d never get to go, and the world certain age got flashbacks, newbies got to go where they’d never get to go, and the world seemed rosy with nostalgic resound.

That the band came from the scenery Montreal only added to the hoopla; that they were now in New York gave them instant access to a whole new hype.
It also gave The Stills a stigma, a stigma that’d have to be eliminated if they were to be believed as a band. Bunched amid a contingent of New Wave revivalists, they were in danger of becoming nothing but.

So The Stills cut the chords that had given them life, turned their backs on backward leanings, left behind the unearned past, and, yes, muffled the Bunnymen echoes of the gloried yore; then they emerged anew.

The result: Without Feathers, a plucky and completely unexpected sounding.
It’s as if The Plimsouls went home after school and came back as The Pixies.

Okay, not quite. But you get the idea. There is some thing decidedly un-Valley Girl-like in the new brand of band, and if it doesn’t reach The Pixies’ epicity, that’s only because no one ever will.

The Stills though, have reached for a bit of Pixieish brawl. Yeah, they may have ended-up on the barroom side of the equation, and they can’t seem to get la-la outta their head, but at least they’re fighting, coming up bruised, bloody and unbound. If some of the feed back that’s greeted Feathers is any indication, they’re gonna need the tough.

And they’re gonna need all the cut-throat swagger they’ve mustered.
“In the Beginning” forewarns: “This story ends in bloodshed.” And the spill trickles uphill from there. Crucificial blood on the hands in “The Mountain,” open sores in “The House We Live In,” and, best, bright est and bloodiest, the Machiavellian meatiness of “Destroyer.” “Only when you’re dead, I’ll make you mine.” All this from a band who once wept through a weepy called “Chang es Are No Good.”

Perhaps it’s the putsch that has The Stills so savage, the reportedly rather ruthless rearranging of the guard. Dave Hamelin has stepped out from behind the traps, shoved Tim Fletcher to the side (they’re now “co-frontmen”), and kicked founding guitarist Greg Paquet to the curb. Drummer Colin Brooks and keyboardist Liam O’Neil have been brought in to buffer the new regime, and, apparently, to back Hamelin’s powerplay.