So there I was, circa '88, pedal to the floor of my Dad's Oldsmobile Firenza, a girl I had the heavy hots for riding shotgun, her long black hair flitting through the cracked window into the summer night. We were headed to a keg party in the parking lot of a hockey arena. Things looked promising. I forget most of what happened at the party, only that the girl, who bore a striking resemblance to the actress Jami Gertz of The Lost Boys, disappeared with some other guy. And that was the end of that. The point in mentioning this is, it's precisely the type of nostalgia-- bittersweet, foggy, mythic-- that's elicited by The Stills, a four-piece Montreal band whose slithery, sentimental rock bridges the divide between post-punk and 80s pop balladry.
The story goes like this (with some embellishments for narrative effect): a few years ago, young Tim and his erstwhile pal Dave happen upon a four-track, which they decide to buy. Money is scarce, but they're auteurs, and so they make the sacrifice. Tim and Dave agree to take turns using the machine, promising to listen to one another's music with a mind towards an eventual collaborative project. Some time passes. Tim and Dave both have doubts, but they soldier on, making music as true to the spirit of their stylistic forebears, Echo & The Bunnymen, as possible. Slowly, they begin to realize that investing in the machine wasn't such a silly idea after all. To their astonishment, "a like-minded songwriting aesthetic" develops. After enlisting two buddies, Greg and Oliver, they form a band, play a few gigs in New York City, and before they know it, they're signed to Vice Records, home to Mancunian rapper The Streets. Fame and snorting blow off a hooker's breasts lay just around the corner.
Unfortunately, The Stills have a way to go before realizing that last part of the story. While the four songs on Rememberese (one song is a remix of another) are, for the most part, subtle, unpretentious pop odes that plunge the listener into a blissful, nostalgic revelry, they're far from the ear-catching, inventive material of a truly great band. For example, the opener "Still in Love Song" is driven by an infectious hook and Tim Fletcher's solemn, Ian Curtis-like drone, but sounds all too familiar, simplistic, and ultimately leads nowhere. Ditto for "Killer Bees", which veers dangerously close to becoming an Interpol sound-alike. Same frenetic guitar, crashing cymbals and distorted vocals.
There's a lesson in this which, like most things, is found in Deuteronomy: Don't worship your idols; it violates the pursuit of innovation. A recent analogy: On one side you got the people who say the Space Elevator (a 60,000 mile elevator stretching into space, made of a fantastically light but durable material called nanotubes) is impossible to build, and on the other side you got the people who say "screw it" and just build the motherfucker. Point being, you have to leap off the path to reason in order to achieve the remarkable.
"Talk to Me", by far the best song on Rememberese, eschews the ornate, textbook 80s pop/rock and instead delivers an edgy, pants-around-the-ankles eulogy to a 900-number lover. Fletcher intones, "The bored person's nightmare/ Crying crocodile tears.../ Did I blow your mind tonight/ Did I make it alright.../ Be sure to call.../ Talk all you want." I've been there. Hey, who hasn't? Greg Paquet's strumming and Dave Hamelin's drumming add balls to the rhythm, and a synthesizer carves out a nice place for itself on the chorus. This song really grows on you. With any luck, this is the direction that The Stills are headed. Otherwise, the dream has ended before it really began.
