Some bands are easy to qualify. On the very first listen to their very first record, any listener can have the band in question figured out – where they’ve been, where they’re going, how they’re going to get there and, in some cases, each stop that they’re going to make along the way – and said group will simply live out the predestined act precisely to expectation. That isn’t a slight necessarily, such was the case with musical institutions including The Ramones, AC/DC, The Replacements and even U2, and in some ways it is gratifying for some listeners to know what to expect even as a band grows and “expands“. Some bands, like Montreal‘s Stills, don’t work that way though. At their inception, The Stills presented themselves very simply as an aesthetically-aware but easy to digest rock band in the dawn of the Canadian indie rock insurrection (that would also yield such groups as The Constantines, The Dears and Broken Social Scene) and, because of that easy-to-palette delivery, were one of the first of the lot to enjoy heavy rotation on modern rock radio. Listeners almost instantly flocked to the band’s banner on the strength of songs like “Love And Death” and the runaway hit single “Still In Love Song” and when the band released its’ sophomore album, Without Feathers, in 2006, their course appeared to be cemented to those on the outside looking in. Those on the inside knew better though; as Stills singer Tim Fletcher admits, nothing in his band or the way they make music is ever set in stone and the proof lies in their newest album, Oceans Will Rise.
Bill Adams vs. Tim Fletcher of The Stills
TF: Hello?
BA: Hey Tim.
TF: How’re you?
BA: I’m not too bad, sorry I’m late.
TF: [chuckling] No trouble, that’s cool.
BA: So you’re in Toronto, you’ve been in town for three days and your album has now seen its official release?
TF: Yup, it’s been a long time in coming. I think we finished it about five months ago so we’ve just been waiting and playing a lot of shows. We’ve been holding our breath for a while so it’s a really good feeling to know that it’s out now.
BA: Well sure, and the last time we were speaking – I think it was for Anthem – you were saying that people were going to really be surprised by what you were putting out. I think you were just about to walk into the studio at that point and I reviewed the record after it showed up on my doorstep and you weren’t kidding – it’s a hell of a thing.
TF: [laughing] Yeah – I do think it’s a logical progression for us – like a step in a further direction – but a lot of people have said that they feel like it bridges the gap between the first and second records. I guess that’s a good thing, but it’s still The Stills you know?
BA: Yeah, it’s still The Stills, but I do disagree about the gap bridging. I think it’s a significant progression far beyond both of those; at least in my ears, it seemed like a very different kind of record.
TF: Oh yeah? How so?
BA: Well, first of all, I don’t remember hearing anything on a Still album before now that sounded the slightest bit watery – like those sorts of effects like chorus, delay and phase – but this one is dominated by them.
TF: I guess that would make the album title appropriate then, if you feel it has a sort of watery quality, Oceans Will Rise certainly would suit.
BA: Yeah, absolutely. I actually thought that’s why it had that name.
TF: Yeah – you know you make a lot of decisions that you only realize later sort of subconsciously informed those aspects of the record.
BA: Sure – so what was the dominating principle behind it when you walked into the studio to make it?
TF: You never know what’s going to come out when you walk into a studio; you could walk into a wonderful experience or a situation that is very difficult and confusing, and it really has a lot to do with personalities and people’s willingness to be open-minded and make the most of it. We didn’t really know what to expect really, we had these songs but we didn’t know which aspects of them were going to take the front. Expectations are a hard thing to discuss, but we knew we had a bunch of really forceful songs and really confident songs so we just wanted to bring them to life in the most appropriate way.
BA: I’m assuming that most of these songs were finished and ready before you started making the album then….
TF: Yeah – we went in with about fifteen or sixteen finished as we usually do; the lyrics and melodies were done, a lot of the rhythm section was worked out and then if we had little changes to make in the studio, we’d do that. It’s just a matter of sounds; you don’t know what sounds you’re going to use you know?
BA: That actually leads into my next question: When you were finished and listened back to what you’d done, did you get what you expected?
TF: I don’t think you ever do – you can’t really do that. Unless you’re a band that thinks in a very linear way and recording is just a matter of setting up a microphone in a room, but even then you get the sound of a band with a single microphone picking up all of the sound – you know? What you get might be close to what you heard in your head, but I don’t think it’s ever going to be identical to what you initially envisioned. I think what we got was a very relaxing and therapeutic creation. There are some new age-y and relaxing guitar tones to it and pulsations that I think are telling of our need to lose our neuroses or at least stroke them gently so they don’t bother us as much.
BA: That’s cool, it’s funny too because I don’t know if you read your own press or not, but in my review I said that there are moments on this album that sound like some folk would hear in a pool of water in a sensory deprivation tank.
TF: I do read some of it, some filters through and I did read that. I agree – it’s sort of like going to a spa in the Alps and you can go into one of those egg chambers that has water in it and it really chills you out. If you wrote that, you’re right; that was an aspect that we needed for ourselves that came through on the record.
BA: That’s cool – this is going to sound dumb, but was that the goal?
TF: Uhm, well like I said, it pays to not have expectations, but I think we’re the kind of band that uses music to try and convey the world in our heads. We have a lot of mental images and the music is designed to sort of articulate those images and present them to listeners on one hand, and try to figure things out on the the other. In that respect, if I were to be put in an isolation chamber with our record, probably wouldn’t be very relaxing because I’d hear all of the things I’d want to change [chuckling] but that’s the peril of being a neurotic guy in a rock band.
BA: There are some things that you would have done differently?
TF: I wouldn’t say that exactly, but when you listen back to a record that you made, you hear all of the little subtleties that went into making it over the assembled effect of the song as a whole.
BA: Okay, now, you might have already said this but how long was this album in the making?
TF: In the recording studio or all together?
BA: Well, I think the last time we spoke, you were already writing the record, but you had yet to record. I think that was in October last year….
TF: The whole process of gathering up the energy and getting things rolling for this album actually started about two years ago. We actually started writing for it while we were on tour and just sort of collected these songs or the bits of them and then working them together. By the time we got back to Montreal, we did a lot of demoing at our own little studio and experimented with what we had to see what worked and what didn’t and once we decided what we wanted to run with, we spent about three months in the studio and got it to where we liked it. It was a long process; if you’re Neil Young and doing stuff like “Let’s Impeach The President” – which I guess he wrote and recorded in three days flat – but that isn’t how it works for us.
BA: That’s kind of funny because I spent most of my morning reviewing the new CSNY record.
TF: How is it?
BA: It’s a live record and, from a performance standpoint, it’s great – but come on; I said this in the review too, every time Crosby, Stills or Nash look like they might go bankrupt, Neil Young swoops in to drag them out on the road to do something. That’s exactly what this record sounds like because there is exactly no CSNY songs on it; nine of the songs are from Living With War and there a couple of songs from the solo records that Crosby, Stills and Nash have done, but no actual CSNY songs.
TF: Wow – see that’s kind of cool to me that they do that. They look forward and don’t just rely on back catalog, they bring something new; Bob Dylan does the same thing.
BA: That’s true, but I’m saying write some new CSNY tunes, don’t just recirculate other material in a different for.
TF: True.
BA: And I say that not having finished the review yet and spilling it into your ear. I apologize. So anyway, were any of these new songs getting played live before studio time?
TF: Oh yeah – we were playing “Snakecharming The Masses,” “Snow In California,” “Being Here,” “Eastern Europe,” “Rooibos” and a version of “Panic” before we went into the studio. We weren’t touring much, but every time we’d do a show, we lean pretty heavily on the new songs which was good because we hadn’t had much of an opportunity to get things going like that in a live setting before, but it gives a great perspective to figure out what’s working and what doesn’t before you go into the studio for later. We didn’t have the advantage of that perspective before so it was great to finally have it.
BA: Well sure – and not only that, you get the chance to see what works for listeners.
TF: Exactly so some things that work great live don’t translate and vice versa. For example, we had a version of “Snow In California” that was much more reminiscent of The Clash circa 1982 and it wasn’t working in the studio as well as it did live so we had to renovate it in the studio.
BA: As far as the record is concerned now, because that document is available, are you attempting to recreate it or interpreting it? I ask because there are some effects on there that would be difficult to pull off live; some of the parts on “Rooibos” spring to mind in that regard….
TF: Well, we’re a really good band [laughing]…. No, the songs aren’t that hard to pull off live. Like, there are some parts that are a little more intricate but, if you sit with it and work it, it becomes second nature with a little practice. The way we’ve always looked at it is that the live show and what you hear on a record are two separate entities; you simply cannot do some things live – like you can’t have a tape echo at the front of the house – that sound great on the record so we have to offer interpretations of that on stage. I’d say that we’ve been doing a pretty good job of interpreting the songs that is true to the versions on the album, but I’m sure that by the end of the tour, we’ll be doing butchered mutant versions with wooden percussion and things like that and timpanis. If you do a timpani roll, that spells instant drama like 2001: A Space Odyssey.
BA: How has the material been received live?
TF: It has been really, really good. And it’s really gratifying to have the record out now and know that we’re in a different phase. We’re looking toward the future in a different way. Since the record has been out, people have been really open about telling us what they think and it has been really positive. Even people that didn’t like our music before – like friends of ours that have never particularly liked what we do but are still friends of ours – have been really supportive of this release.
Artist:
The Stills online
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