Today is Wed, Jan 7th. Gigbot is tracking 14427 shows

You aren't signed in (Sign in)

The Stills

The Stills

The hiss of tape may seem nostalgic in the land of digital recordings and MP3s, but for Montreal’s The Stills it’s more than an scratch from the distant past. That hiss recalls the band’s very beginnings, because without a simple, chunky-looking four track tape recorder The Stills just wouldn’t be.

“It’s like our Rosetta stone, you can trace everything about The Stills back to that four track,” explains Tim Fletcher, The Stills 25 year-old singer-guitarist. “A friend of ours who’d ran into financial troubles in London called-up and said ‘take some of my belongings just send me some money’, so we took that.” Splitting the cost with close friend and Stills drummer Dave Hamelin, a frantic exchange of ideas began hurtling between them.

“We shared the recorder so I’d listen to whatever Tim did before me and then he’d listen to what I’d done,” recalls Hamelin. “It would be, ‘I liked his song, I’m going to try to make a better one’. We created our own little universe.” From early experiments this private world began to take shape, fleshed-out with a delicate melancholy born from a shared restlessness. “The only moments when we felt we could truly let go were when we were recording,” explains Fletcher who with Hamelin writes The Stills’ material. “When you’re playing you’re not thinking of anything else, not even what you’re playing, you’re just doing. So we created everything for those moments. Ultimately we wanted to feel like that all the time.”

Fused with paranoia and desolation but tinged with humour and hope, Logic Will Break Your Heart is a record of sweeping romanticism struggling against a homogenised world. “To me the album is about that defeatism,” explains Hamelin. “The world is heartbreaking. When you’re young and you have ideals you strive to push through boundaries, then as you get older and are forced to get a job you realise how the system works and logic breaks your heart.”

Clearly The Stills have drawn from some dark places, but among the scything guitars and brutal percussion, soul-warming tunes ensure their debut long player doesn’t wallow in despair. Closing with the lullaby-like Yesterday Never Tomorrow, Logic Will Break Your Heart might be a tour of the heart’s dark-side but it’s one that always points towards the light. “There’s a hope there too,” concludes Fletcher of the swirling emotions. “I guess if you don’t have that hope then there’s nothing.”
BAND MEMBERS

DAVE HAMLIN - Vocals, Guitar, Drums

TIM FLETCHER Vocals, Guitar
LIAM O’NEIL – Keyboard
JULIEN BLAIS Drums
OLIVER CROWE - Bass