Send "Still Corners " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Pitchfork |
 When Tessa Murray sings "Stuck in a time machine/ That was just a dream," on "Cuckoo", the lead-off track from Still Corners' Creatures of an Hour, she sums up much of the dreamy, 1960s-obsessed band's most obvious attributes. London-based Still Corners are something of a transatlantic hybrid: American Greg Hughes began the band when he met Murray in London, and they grew to a quartet shortly afterwards. There was a long spell between their debut EP Remember Pepper? and last year's sweetly jangly single "Don't Fall in Love", but their first full-length, Creatures of an Hour, is a cohesive statement of the band's aesthetic-- nouvelle-vague-nodding retro-cool. Fashioning the most familiar signifiers of 60s style in a contemporary frame, Creatures of an Hour is a perfect soundtrack for the internet's vast acreage of Anna Karina Tumblrs.Which makes a certain kind of sense: Still Corners like movies. They talk in interviews about the inspiration they draw from their favorite kinds of films (Italian horror, French New Wave, and anything soundtracked by Ennio Morricone), and their music often gets tagged with that puzzlingly synesthesiac adjective "cinematic." It calls to mind the way earlier this year the internet was buzzing with talk about Dirty Beaches' Badlands, a record that drew more comparisons to like-minded filmmakers (David Lynch, Wong Kar Wai) than musicians. It seemed to signal something about the way we listen to music now-- the importance of the audio-visual experience in making aesthetic connections in a digital music scene flooded with new artists. Still Corners' most prominent touchstone, though, is a band that, even a decade ago, sounded like they were making soundtracks to imaginary French New Wave classics. The influence of Broadcast is evident all over Creatures of an Hour, from the eerie carnival synths of "Circulars" to the chilly, music-box plink of "The White Season". It's perhaps unfair to hold a band's first record up to the high-water mark of their idols-- and especially brutal since most of us are still reeling from singer Trish Keenan's untimely passing. But since they draw overtly from Broadcast's overall aesthetic, Murray's vocals cannot but fall flat under the inevitable comparison the rest of their sound evokes. She sings each track in a breathy exhale like she's trying to fog up a car window. All of which sounds lovely, but there's not enough substance or personality in the vocals she displays on these tracks to transcend her influences-- or to be very memorable at all....full text |
| Bbc |
| There are so many meaningless washes of sound around these days that it's easy to get caught switching off immediately once the first hint of cave reverb reaches your ears. Rather than let the waves lap at the cochleas in an irritating but monotonous manner, Londoners Still Corners seem to know how far to plunge their songs into the depths of refraction. First of all, they make sure songs are actually there. Breathy though Tessa Murray's vocals may be, she's still carrying a hauntingly simple melody each time, as well as being capable of whispering seduction. Submarine, the closing track, is sublime. Built around a repetitive solid bassline, a guitar glitters across it, while all manner of spectral noises billow below. Opener Cuckoo is a languid statement, laidback but with a relentless attempt to seep into your dreams through gliding sounds. Also, it would just avoid being ominous if it didn't have the brooding synth-like bassline rumbling underneath; but then it wouldn't be half as memorable as it is here. There's a certain eerie horror flick feel on Circulars, the keyboards sounding like a modern silent movie score. Into the Trees has a thrilling opening squeal, which returns during a reeling instrumental, and it perfectly complements the slow, chiming guitar while shards of sound clamber over the mountainous, building in voice, replete with waves of echo and trembling drums. There's monochrome nostalgia at work here, and even the foggy plumes of noise suit the undeniable retro influence. Yet, everything is so palatable because everything seems a natural consequence of the songwriting and performance. None of the effects feels forced or laid over the top like a melody-sucking placenta – it sounds like four people with a will to make a shroud of noise, in a room with extraordinary acoustics. Initially it’s the soothing splashes, outside of the lines, that draw your attention more than the stark but hazy band at the core. Soon, though, the extraneous sonics pull you into their effortless cool....full text |
| Undertheradarmag |
| "Endless Summer," the track that gave many music listeners their first taste of the U.K.'s Still Corners when it hit the web last year, exhibits a striking contradiction with its title. While the name evokes images of bright, cloudless skies, and hot sand underfoot, the music itself crackles with the chill of a cool autumn breeze. The song isn't about a summer at hand, but a summer that's just passed; it's a tribute to a bygone season, one that's arrived once the leaves have already hit the ground. Later in the band's full-length debut, Creatures of An Hour, "The White Season" looks ahead further to the coming winter. This late-October vibe is strongest in the unsettling "I Wrote In Blood," in which the narrator obsessively fills the pages of a notebook with the name of a reluctant lover. Roughly-strummed guitar gives way to creeping electric piano, calling up horror film soundtracks such as Keith Emerson's score for Inferno or John Carpenter's iconic Halloween theme. The cinematic world that Still Corners inhabits skews often towards the ghostly; Tessa Murray's ethereal singing is certainly a main contributor to this. Greg Hughes' often spooky instrumentals seem almost piped in, as if arriving via shortwave from a place more distant than Murray's voice. Songs are spun together with airy vocals, vibrato organ, and slowly-pounding bass drum, drawing a chilly musical thread throughout the record. In this impressive debut, Still Corners has crafted an appropriate album for the autumn season. There's an inherent beauty in the starkness of it all, and the open-ended lyrics help give the music a mysterious, often eerie ambience. This delicate, atmospheric music is an intriguing take on the dream pop canon; sparse and elegantly vexing, it's a fitting record to accompany the shortening days. ...full text |
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