The Stills May Yet Redeem Themselves

The conspicuous lack of CDs for sale on Friday night was punctuated by the bargain sale on Stills T-shirts from their Without Feathers tour. It was a telling sidebar for a band whose Logic Will Break Your Heart debut was deservedly much loved while their follow-up, 2006's Without Feathers, was, well, let's say less loved.

The band have no new record to speak of but they recently signed with Toronto's uber indie machine Arts & Crafts (having parted ways with their former label, Vice Records) so a celebration was in order. The shows scheduled for Friday and Saturday night were geared as a way to herald the band's signing with A&C, preview new music and remind fans of how good the band once were, and it turns out, how good they still are.

Opener Sebastien Grainger took the stage at a fairly full Lee's Palace and lit into a very engaging hour-long set. In stark contrast to Grainger's dulcet and delicately picked solo acoustic contribution to this year's excellent Friends In Bellwoods compilation, the ex-DFA 1979 frontman and his band played a raucous collection of gritty, post-punk, guitar-heavy tracks. Grainger wheeled around the stage, guiding his Flying V from one rough-hewn solo to the next. He set the bar kinda high for the rest of the evening — like the original Godfather sort of high.

It was clear the from moment The Stills took the stage that the crowd was willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. The Montreal-based quintet served up cuts from both Without Feathers and Logic. "In The Beginning," one of the few songs I can stomach from the sophomore effort, was exceptional within the confines of Lee's. But it was "Still In Love Song" and the guitar couplets of "Gender Bombs" that decimated the place and inspired some very generous fist-pumps and clapping. The band's older material shored up the six new cuts the quintet previewed, including "Rooibos." The galloping, syncopated guitar charger harkened back to the band's early brilliance, though more in feeling than in sound.

The Stills looked invigorated and that energy overflowed into the audience. Rock star poses littered the hour long set and animated bassist Oliver Corbeil excitedly strutted from one side of the stage to the other, mugging for camera shots and entangling patch chords. Their initial encore offering, "Lola Stars And Stripes," wrung the last bits of energy from the place. From the first hum of sustained guitar chords the entire assembly of people in Lee's was shoulder to shoulder with the band, shouting the mournful chorus back at the stage. I'm a big fan of second chances and, if Friday night's performance is any indicator, The Stills' next record won't necessitate a fire sale of old T-shirts.