Sometimes a band that you thought you had pegged will turn around and surprise you by totally reinventing its sound between records (also known as when you weren’t looking) and so, when a new album eventually appears, you’re totally caught off-guard by what you hear. That moment of initial confusion—when that first song starts and you don’t know what you’re listening to right away because it’s just so different—can be incredibly exciting because your brain works frantically to reassess this new, unexpected stimulus. That excitement is the feeling every Stills fan will experience when they hear Oceans Will Rise.
For their third album (first for Arts & Crafts), The Stills don’t jettison the aspects of their music that drew the comparisons to Interpol and Joy Division that the band has always been saddled with so much as place them in the background and overlay a tide of tranquil introspection that’s immediately disarming and enticing. The change is felt immediately in the opening strains of “Don’t Talk Down” as, with the Joy Division undercurrent driving the song, guitarist David Hamelin stirs up some exhilarating textures and singer Tim Fletcher heaves a mighty sigh that will make listeners swoon. The effect is one of relief—like the aural equivalent of succumbing to the tranquility of a sensory deprivation tank—and, with that mood set, the band simply rides it into a unique place that’s incredibly comfortable and relaxing.
In an almost subliminal way, listeners find themselves joining the band in the watery, textural sketches of songs like “Snakecharming The Masses,” “Everything I Build,” “Panic” and “Dinosaurs” that don’t actively attempt to register as being anthemic or bombastic. However, those things do come through as inevitably as a force of nature; breaking through on the strength of the dichotomy of the comfortingly soft sonics produced by the band and Fletcher’s urgent, almost pleading vocals.
As Oceans Will Rise progresses, the tides that the band produced in the first two-thirds of the album grow troubled and, by the time “I’m With You” beaches itself with some rockist guitars and “Rooibos/ Palm Wine Drinkard” starts churning with tempestuous rhythms, those listeners that had been hypnotized in the first half of the record begin to feel an unexplainable sense of panic. That this serene soundtrack may come undone, thus spelling both the end of the band and the finale of the listener’s cognitive functions is an imposing and terrifying possibility. It’s a harrowing experience and speaks volumes to the spell that The Stills have cast over listeners with this album; you find yourself living and dying with the moods that they create in each song.
Perhaps because they want to ensure that everyone gets away from Oceans Will Rise alive, the record closes with “Statue Of Sirens”—a song that paints the image of a reservoir as calm and flat as a sheet of glass. The gentle arpeggios tug listeners back to an emotional center while Fletcher coos to soothe nerves frazzled by the late-playing songs of the record and the elation that listeners feel because of it is actually shocking.
How The Stills managed to produce an album that connects on such a basic level with anyone that hears it may never be known, but why question it? With Oceans Will Rise, The Stills have created a textbook example of body rock so exquisite that there’s no reason to ask how it works; just listen, give in, let go and feel the elation in the end.
Artist:
http://www.thestills.net/
http://www.myspace.com/thestills
Album:
Oceans Will Rise will be released on Arts & Crafts on August 19, 2008. Buy it on Amazon.
