Stills face identity crisis

Rarely does a band build on the success of its debut album by completely altering its sound. The Stills' 2003 debut, Logic Will Break Your Heart, with its Cure-on-steroids dark pop, put the Montreal-based band at the forefront of the doom and gloom renaissance. Their second album, Without Feathers finds the band in a much lighter and happier mood, owing just as much to McCartney, Elton, Oasis and Blur as it does to Echo and the Bunnymen.\nThis change in attitude was undoubtedly facilitated by the major lineup changes that the band underwent in between Logic and Feathers. After sacking lead guitarist Greg Paquet, drummer and primary songwriter Dave Hamelin switched to guitar and also managed to wrestle most of the lead vocal duties away from usual frontman, Tim Fletcher. The result is an album that is heavy on piano, organ and major-key melodies, while still retaining some of the bite of their earlier work.\nFeathers opens with the effective one-two punch of "In the Beginning" and "The Mountain." The former establishes in five minutes of pastoral pop that the band is a completely new entity not interested in reliving its past. The latter finds the band lifting Jackson Browne's "Running on Empty," piano lick, only to whip the song into a swirling, frenetic climax.\nOne of the most interesting facets of the Stills is their ability to draw upon a mishmash of influences. "In the End" sounds like a Bowie outtake from the early seventies with its off key piano balladry, while "Destroyer" is a pop gem complete with a chipper brass section that would have sounded right at home on Blur's Parklife. But, even though the band's influences are evident, they avoid sounding like a tribute band by managing to make these songs their own.\nThose interested in finding any semblance of the dark sound of Logic only have a few tracks to choose from. The Fletcher-sung songs come the closest with "Helicopters" and "Outro" both being depressing enough to ruin your day. Also, "Baby Blues" sounds very similar to "Allison Krausse" from their debut.\nFeathers isn't perfect by any means. The middle of the album lags a bit and there are moments when the new sound doesn't quite click, but you've really got to admire the Stills for daring to fall on their faces. It takes some guts to do a creative 180 and follow a different creative path than what others expect from you. And while they've undoubtedly lost some goth-kid fans, who really wants to be a sad conformist anyways?