The Stills Need To Shake Things Up

You can say what you want about The Stills, but their career has been uneven from a critical perspective.

The band's critically acclaimed 2003 Logic Will Break Your Heart debut album was released around the same time as discs like Bloc Party's Silent Alarm and the post-punk revival last decade.

But the band's abrupt turn with their almost folky, Broken Social Scene-esque 2006 Without Feathers sophomore release saw critics (and some fans) turn on them. While it had its moments and was a valiant attempt to do something different and keep from falling into indie rock's staleness, it wasn't nearly as strong as Logic.

Part of the problem was that guitarist Greg Paquet left The Stills in 2005 to finish his university degree. That meant drummer Dave Hamelin took his place up front and became a second frontman to singer/guitarist Tim Fletcher, whose songwriting style is quite different and darker.

It always seemed like Without Feathers' biggest problem was that it was mostly written by Hamelin, when Logic had been written in collaboration between all four members.

The Stills' third album, 2008's Oceans Will Rise, saw a bit of a turn back towards the material on Logic by wedding those two sounds, but still wasn't quite as good.

But now Paquet has rejoined the band, and he and the other four members — Fletcher, Hamelin, bassist Olivier Corbeil and keyboardist Liam O'Neil — are working on their fourth release.

So it was telling that The Stills opened their show at Toronto's Horseshoe Tavern on Thursday night with four songs from Logic Will Break Your Heart. Thankfully, no birds pooed on them during "Lola Stars And Stripes," and the crowd went nuts throughout other Logic songs like "Gender Bombs," "Of Montreal" and "Fevered." They even performed "Retour A Vega" (which wasn't performed in Spanish and was done in its original French, despite Fletcher's witty comment that it was) from the Wicker Park soundtrack.

It's probably telling that very little from Without Feathers was played, and that's probably because Hamelin spent most of the time behind the drum kit. Nonetheless, it's probably also representative of that album's lack of success in general.

A good chunk of Oceans Will Rise was played, including "Snow In California," "Panic," "Being Here" and "Snakecharming The Masses," with which the band finished their set before coming back for their encore. They ended with a few more songs that included Logic's "Still In Love Song" and "Ready For It."

That a band's debut album is still so endearingly popular and that they perform so much of it live, is both a good and bad thing. On the one hand, it proves Logic Will Break Your Heart still resonates with The Stills' fans. On the other, the band run the risk of becoming stale if there's nothing new they can offer people. They can't go on making the same album over and over, sure, but they can't keep falling back on it live, either.

After releasing one album that was a critical and commercial flop and another that was so-so, The Stills really need their fourth release to be spectacular. Most of the set's material was six or seven years old, and while that might be because of Paquet's return to the fold, they can't go on performing songs that old forever.