The best way to do laundry is getting crammed up with The Stills
It's taken the Stills to come up with the second album, Without Feathers, in England (including growing another member). SUPERSWEET talks to frontman Tim Fletcher to find out why they had been keeping us waiting for this long.
SS: Without Feathers was released on May 9, 06 in America, but not till about now in the UK, are there any differences in terms of contexts? Does the time delay make it irrelevant for you, as artists?
Tim: The UK will generally see our releases later, but not this late usually. We waited to jump into bed with the right label, Drowned In Sound. I think we dig the time delay, because you get to revisit a similar album-growth and you already have a show worked out and ready to roll. Plus, we have a different track-listing in the UK and several extra songs not on the North American release, so that’s a bonus as well. Also, you guys’ll definitely see a third record way sooner than later since we’ve had that extra year... Already working on it.
SS: Because Greg Paquet (guitar) left, Dave Hamelin is now switching from drums to guitar and fronting, is this also one of the factors that affected the change in sound too or was it something that was already organically changing?
Tim: It was already organically changing and we were pretty much in the throes of adjusting to this crazy music life. Some external relationships fell apart or altered dramatically and we needed to address our band issues at the same time. Plus we felt like we needed to step away from this musical realm that was just feeling more and more diluted and done. Though we all love (first album) Logic Will Break Your Heart, there were too many bands in that genre at the time, and we were feeling different ways, doing different drugs, and different things needed expressing. Plus Dave wanted to play the guitar and sing, so we adjusted. It was crazy but essential. No one ever really knows what’s going to happen, you just have to be ready to do the best things to keep vital and creative.
SS: All your videos are really interesting and seem to have detailed concepts to all of them, and that goes for all your general art direction too. Are you still working with (the design collective) Surface2Air? How much input do you have all these things these days?
Tim: We’re definitely still working with S2A and love them like crazy. We were just playing in NYC and Gordon Hull (S2A's co-founder) came out and we showed him new demos and started him thinking on it. We all feel it’s really important to have the movies and ideas in our brains come out, for artfulness to rule, because it’s pretty much why you choose this life, to grow outwards with your ideas and expand on them and annex them to your music and all that. We get to live in fantasyland. Surface2Air is a part of that. They did the art for both albums, and will with the next as well. Though we really went the other way for some aspects of Without Feathers in the US, to see what would happen, letting things just be more natural.
SS: All being art students before joining the band, what kind of art did you each do? Does that help to apply to making music?
Tim: It helps 100%. It shakes up your brain and can be really influential. I studied film for 4 years, and a lot of it deals with all kinds of art/philosophy/etc. Dave did some creative arts/writing, but he’s more from the Liberal Arts/Philosophy side of things. Oliver did some music, Liam did tons of really crazy stuff you’d need to ask him about. In the end though, we all dropped out to play music. We took what we needed then got out to make up our own program
SS: Montreal seems to be full of vibrant artists and everyone seems to be contributing to something/other people’s projects all the time. Are there any artists you guys are collaborating with or have done so in the past? Any good things you can recommend us to check out?
Tim: We’re always hanging with tons of people and mixing music and good times with them, Sam Roberts, Metric, Broken Social Scene, Jason Collett, The Dears, Apostle Of Hustle, and also The Kings of Leon. We love all those bands so much.
SS: Lyrically, is there leap from the last album too? Who/what inspired the lyrical contents on this album?
Tim: Break-ups, going nuts, trying to pull silver linings out of desperate places… Relationships with people we love, people we tried our best to love well and right, or with entities we’ve despised. It’s a breakup record, essentially, and one made to help us through, for us, by us, for you. There may be a leap, but they’re new songs so that’s natural, no?
SS: Are these lyrics written by one person or do you share the duty?
Tim: I write them for my tunes, and Dave for his. Then we sometimes discuss our ideas in a round-table setting with cups of rum-filled tea, high on acid, with Irish Setters at our feet, deep in the frigid wintering climes of North-Eastern Quebec.
SS: Is there a lyricist/author you look up to and get inspirations from?
Tim: Leonard Cohen, Tom Robbins, Kurt Vonnegut, Kenneth Patchen are big inspirations, Tom Waits as well. I love those guys for so many reasons. Just hyper-creative genius minds that make me feel the entire spectrum of human feelings so specifically and intensely that I can’t turn away no matter what. Proof that art can change your perception of the world and push you into places you’d have been frightened to, or unsure of before. Humanists. David Lynch too. There’s a billion different sources, lines, quotes, from people who inspire you, even the ones you think you’d hate.
SS: Are there any songs that were written even before Logic...? What was the first song (for this album) and how did it come about?
Tim: None of the songs were written before Without Feathers. 'In The Beginning' was a group effort, me on bass, Oliver on drums, Dave guitar/vox and Liam on piano/keys. We started jamming two chords and this progression came out and it wrote itself, and Dave wrote lyrics and touched it up. It was the first thing we did for Without Feathers. No two songs are written alike. It’s a mystery, but you really have to just put yourself in a situation where it can happen, ie: with guitar and recorder, or pen, or with your lyric book, and then just fuck around and see what comes. After a while something cool will come. It’s a lifelong process of experimenting I think.