Beware of lazy critics trying to turn us all into velcro-magnons. This album is not a "classic." As a member of that crucial demographic that has outlived Keats but not Jesus, I can understand why young'uns might consider Logic Will Break Your Heart poetic while the oldies find it miraculous. But those of us aged 27-32 have been thoroughly banged around by rock history revisions, fluctuations in irony, surrogate nostalgia, genre inbreeding, genre crossbreeding, and the pursuit of cool-- we've grown up inside a pasticheteria, so we know that The Stills are what The Posies were in their day, and what The Libertines were a few minutes ago: stuck in a phantom zone called "not there yet," and possibly because the personalities of their influences eclipse any sense of identity they could muster. The Stills are a complicated case, though, inspiring equal amounts of pleasure and horror, like that dream in which everyone has mozzarella genitals.
Speaking of dreams, didn't you want to believe the hype that this would be the album equivalent of what the film Donnie Darko was, a thrilling amalgam of eightiesness? The movie comprehensively homaged its forebears, dreaded its Republicans, and imaginatively conveyed the eerie and tragic. The Stills take some big cues from Darko's soundtrack standouts Echo & The Bunnymen, The Church, and Joy Division, but their retro arrangements, percussive guitar work, and "big" cavernous production have been beaten to the market by too many other bands, among them Interpol, The Organ, and several of those post-P.I.L., disco-bassline-abusing, Sly-and-the-Family-Stroke "dancepunks." The album does contain some fascinatingly elliptical "political" material, most notably "Lola Stars and Stripes" and "Let's Roll", which begins, if I can figure out Tim Fletcher's oversexed slur: "Lie on the floor of the runway, babe, then/ Wait for the ride/ We'll have a comfortable flight/ Don't be afraid to be afraid here with me." This post-boxcutter tune goes on to discuss plunging into wormholes, providing a "fanciful" take on the terror-war kickoff, and furthering the Donnie Darko connections. (The song definitely outperforms Neil Young's "Let's Roll", which is karmically funny, considering that a barrage of CSN&Y; is what comes up when one seeks file-sharers for "Stills.")
And about Tim Fletcher: he is the rare singer who is too proficient. This indie-rock Streisand is perfectly modulated throughout the album: guttural Bowie here, castrati Coldplay there, to the point that one never buys his band's rapturous lyrics. Straightjacketed by overproduction, no amount of Reagan-jangle lends him the requisite gone-daddy-gone-ness.
And about that hit single: "Still in Love Song" is, of course, protectively and cynically titled, since the song repeats "still in love" as many times as our gubmint barks "weapons o' mass destruction" in hopes that we memorize and internalize it (sigh, at the illogic of patriotism breaking ones' heart). This old Motown technique confirms that the song "bumps," but denies it "tha bomb" status, especially since it's a bait-and-switch considering the rest of the album's non-club sound. What makes matters more desperate is that "Still in Love Song" was already released on the band's debut EP, and will probably appear on their sophomore LP as "I Still Know You're in Love Last Summer" and later it will be their only entry on Cheney Beat!, the future K-tel compilation of hits from our epoch. When the chorus goes from minor to major during the breakdown, you can hear God's hernia acting up.
In his recent book The Middle Mind, novelist Curtis White decries post-modern pluralism as the horny hypocrite that it is, and too often, The Stills try to commandeer a three-way between their savvy, their dopeyness, and their savvily dopey pop heritage. See their song titles: you get compelling poetry such as "Gender Bombs" and "Yesterday Never Tomorrows", cliches such as "Ready for It" and "Love and Death", and insider references such as "Of Montreal" and "Allison Krausse". (The Middle Mind's perfect work of art: eighties pastiche Blue Velvet, about the banality of evil, the banality of good, and the banality of banality.)
BEST SONG: "Animals and Insects", by far. The only number that flirts with both lo-fi production and Schneider TM-style eclecto-rash, this track thanks The Cure for their Seventeen Seconds drum stylings and even lends a gorgeous melodrama to the sororitese mantra "oh my god." Did I mention that the ditty is about mass murder? When those drums explode, I'm like, brainwash me, you Canadian New Yorkers! Teach me to shoegaze, because this eye-level perspective shit is not working out!
CREEPINESS: Too many of these tracks would work in a fitness center, between Bon Jovi's "It's My Life" and The Fabulous Thunderbirds' "Tuff Enuff", as we vain flexers unwillingly act out slave-ship scenes from Ben-Hur on the cardio modules.
Haters hear pop/punk and decry The Stills as an Alkaline Quartet deserving of a slot on the Pizza Hut jukebox. The band's 9-11 stuff might be better than Portastatic's nasal wimpout Summer of the Shark, but I still say that liking The Stills would be like sleeping with a Frankenpartner made out of one's past lovers. Boo. Hiss. Give us Barabbas! Give us Dukakis! Damn, I hope this Perfect Strangers shirt is cool. Who you calling hipster, hipster?
