The Stillsí melodies tend to run deep
By ALAN SCULLEY
Get Out

To hear the shimmering guitar pop on The Stills’ debut CD, “Logic Will Break Your Heart,” one would never suspect the kind of music three of the four band members were playing together right up to the time they formed The Stills in 2002.

“We were in a band called The Dropouts right before The Stills,” drummer Dave Hamelin says. “It was sort of a Misfits-meets-Black Sabbath type of band.

Nothing against punk/metal, but so far there’s every indication it was a good thing Hamelin, singer/guitarist Tim Fletcher and bassist Oliver Crowe graduated from the Dropouts to their current band.

Over the past year, the Montreal-based The Stills have been one of the most talked-about new bands to arrive on the scene. A four-song EP, “Rememberese,” which came out last summer, was reason enough for “Rolling Stone” to rank The Stills No. 3 on the magazine’s top 10 artists to watch list.

Britain’s leading music magazine, “New Musical Express,” featured the group as a “Hot New Band” in August, while “Spin” and “Entertainment Weekly” added to the buzz with features in the fall.

What’s ironic about the band’s rise is that Hamelin, who penned the majority of the songs on “Logic Will Break Your Heart,” had never written songs until The Stills were formed.

“By some sort of fluke I became the main songwriter for The Stills, which I never thought I would be because it’s just weird,” Hamelin says, recognizing that it’s rare for drummers to be chief songwriters in bands.

Hamelin’s shift to songwriting grew out of unfortunate circumstances. A friend of his had moved to London and gotten caught up in drug trafficking. He reached a point where he desperately needed money and contacted Hamelin, offering to sell him any of his belongings he had left back in Montreal. Hamelin selected a four-track tape machine. He and Fletcher both kicked in $50 and sent the money to London.

The four-track machine began splitting time between Hamelin and Fletcher, who each started recording songs with it independently.
“It started as a desire just to record things and have fun recording,” Hamelin says. “And then I said, well I have to come up with songs if I’m going to record. So I just started really, really getting into recording anything that came to mind. I think, when I heard The Pixies for the first time, I said all right, I can be an artist. The Pixies sort of enlightened me to the fact that I can be humorous and make serious music.”

The Stills have drawn frequent comparisons to such ’80s-era
bands as The Smiths, The Cure and Echo and the Bunnymen. While Hamelin said he is a fan of the first two of those bands, he doesn’t see why The Stills have so often been compared to those groups or to the ’80s as an era.

In fact, he feels that writers have missed an obvious contemporary influence.

“I’m really surprised that nobody has actually said ‘Oh, they sound like Radiohead’,” Hamelin says. “I think if I were to sort of compare to somebody, I would say it’s more Radiohead than Echo and the Bunnymen. People are going to compare you to somebody and I really don’t mind being compared to those bands because they’re great bands. There are a lot worse comparisons out there.”