Still Corners
Creatures of an Hour
Release Date: Oct 11, 2011
Genre(s): Pop/Rock, Alternative/Indie Rock, Indie Pop, Dream Pop, Neo-Psychedelia
Record label: Sub Pop
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Album Review: Creatures of an Hour by Still Corners
Very Good, Based on 9 Critics
Based on rating 8/10
With a sound inspired by the spacy pop of Italian sound, Still Corners make their full-length debut on Creatures of an Hour. Drenched in reverb and layered with the haunting vocals of singer Tessa Murray, the album deliver psychedelic pop with an expansive, cinematic feeling, letting listeners get lost in its slow, drifting melodies. .
Based on rating 8/10
While here at DiS we'd normally like to consider ourselves being on the ball whenever it comes to discovering new music, its fair to say we were latecomers to the party where Still Corners are concerned. Despite having initially formed in 2008, it took a further two-and-a-half years and two immaculate 45s ('Endless Summer' and 'Don't Fall In Love') for the realisation to kick in that something quite special might just be occurring on our own doorstep. Of course we'd apologetically cover our tracks by arguing that the latter part of 2010 was probably the best time to discover Still Corners anyway.
Based on rating 4/5
[a]Still Corners[/a] are a band of great beauty; live, the London group surround themselves in dimly lit, elegant cascades of projected white light. But transferring their aesthetic to record, they’ve created a world far beyond their monochrome-tinged performances. Guitars trail delicately over weaving synths, while Tessa Murray’s silky vocals wrap everything in a dreamy kiss.
Based on rating 7/10
"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.
Based on rating 6.5/10
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.
Based on rating 3/5
STILL CORNERS play the Drake October 25. See listing. Rating: NNN A series of 7-inch singles released last year landed London-based group Still Corners on the prestigious Sub Pop label, and on their debut full-length it's not hard to hear why. The band's romantic drone of whispery melodies, undulating rhythms and psyched-out autumnal soundscapes is exactly what you'd expect from songs with titles like Circulars, Endless Summer, Velveteen and The Twilight Hour.
Based on rating 3/5
With their debut full-length Creatures of an Hour, the London-based dream pop act Still Corners have expanded their sound considerably from past releases, with principal songwriter Greg Hughes allowing his music to break free from his tendency towards a pseudo-mod culture-inspired aesthetic that dominated the band’s first release, 2008’s still-appealing EP Remember Pepper?, occasionally at the expense of the music. This change, however, wasn’t really unexpected: since that EP, Hughes has been busy composing new material, assembling a permanent band to perform it, and searching for the right vocalist to enact his particular musical vision. So, what is his musical vision anyway? While Still Corners continue on in the dream pop tradition, with trudging, hazy vocals and guitars to swoon over, bandleader Hughes is also inspired in large part by the visual aesthetics of the 1960s, “film noir,” “Italian horror,” and much more besides.
Opinion: Excellent
Subtle but memorable songs, seeped in monochrome, fill the Londoners’ debut for Sub Pop. Brad Barrett 2011 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.
Opinion: Very Good
With a story that sounds just like an indie romance script, Still Corners began when songwriter, guitarist and drummer Greg Hughes first saw vocalist Tessa Murray after the two both happened to de-board a London Bridge-bound train at the same time. And as they say with love at first sight, which turned to musical interest at first sight, the rest is history. Hughes and Murray teamed up with bassist Leon Dufficy and guitarist Luke Jarvis to produce the group’s first full-length album, Creatures Of An Hour.
'Creatures of an Hour'
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