Toronto quintet Still Life Still's 2009 full-length debut Girls Come Too was a shaggy collection of post-Broken Social Scene indie rock, co-produced by that band's head honcho Kevin Drew. It was the sort of first record that came with immediately apparent strengths and weaknesses: the band's knack for spindly, easily melodic guitar hooks was evident, but counteracted by lyrical conceits that ran the gamut from immature to disgusting. The grotesquerie climaxed, quite literally, on the back-half of "T-Shirts," a song that hinges on its narrative participants engaging in a sort of barter involving bodily fluids.
The band's new record, Mourning Trance, is grappling with weightier issues, drawn from the deaths of one member's parents and a close friend of the group. The series of traumas inspired the record's title, which refers to the natural struggle to continue on with our lives and duties in the face of loss. And while newfound maturity and thematic concerns borne out of personal problems are not foolproof indicators of musical quality, Mourning Trance is a major step forward from the debut on multiple fronts.
Vocalist Brendan Saarinen has described album opener "Burial Suit" as a "starting point" for Mourning Trance, and it's easy to imagine the band in the studio playing the track back and realizing they'd struck a vein. It's a fantastic song, nicely textured and ringing with anthemic ambition. It's also notable for its sense of scale and pace: a guitar line that might've previously been pushed to the foreground is relegating to a role of an atmospheric backing whine, and a vault into a climactic round of full-band vocals feels organic and well deserved. The song finds solid lyrical footing, too, with Saarinen struggling to get out of bed so he can piece his life back together.
The band manages to sustain the momentum generated by "Burial Suit" over Mourning Trance's first half. “Dancing Spines” lives up to its title, quickly driving forward with jittery percussion and a viscous bass line, and the title track hides a potentially dark sentiment underneath a sweet vocal melody as Saarinen chants, “I don’t wanna see it when you wake up.” These songs share a refreshing guitar-related restraint: where the best tracks on Girls Come Too possessed little to recommend other than memorable leads, even less successful Mourning Trance cuts offer a new emphasis on other elements, from splashy and engaging rhythmic sections to buzzing synths like those on lead single “In Enemies”. The guitar parts are still worth commending, but they're not the sole reasons for each song's existence.
The album does falter a bit at the back end of its second half, closing with a set of songs that are propped up by one or two good ideas but lack the tight construction and craft of earlier cuts. Take "Deer Hologram", for instance: an introductory riff worthy of a Smashing Pumpkins C-side circa Siamese Dream and a decent "dear/deer" homophone pun are appealing, but their delivery mechanism is far from indelible. That said, it's easy to gloss over a few missteps in light of the leap Still Life Still have taken.
