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Following the mini-album Remember Pepper (2008),
English duo Still Corners, fronted by breathy vocalist Tessa Murray and
fueled by the acid electronic organ of producer Greg Hughes,
crafted the delicate atmospheric dream-pop of
Creatures Of An Hour (Sub Pop, 2011), notably the danceable
Cuckoo
(like a slocore remix of the Cocteau Twins)
and
I Wrote In Blood (mysterious and hypnotic like
Strange Days-era Doors).
If Endless Summer sounds like it loses its purpose in the middle of
the song, the album as a whole spans an impressive range of formats, from
Into the Trees, that basically offers an ethereal and optimistic take
on dark-punk of the 1980s, to Demons, a skeletal lullaby.
Strange Pleasures (2013) contains the singles Fireflies and Berlin Lovers
but especially the jangling The Trip.
They entered full Eurythmics mode with the
single Horses at Night (2015), and continued in that synth-pop direction with the electronics-heavy Dead Blue (2016) that contains Lost Boys and Currents.
Even more trite and generic are the songs of Slow Air (2018), propelled by dull drum-machines, with
perhaps the exception of
The Message, thanks to its
atmospheric twangy guitar.
Last Exit (2021) retreated from those electronic excesses into an almost
country style and a vision of the vast inanimate spaces of the desert.
A shimmering 1960s-inspired guitar sound dominates
The Last Exit, an imitation of the Cowboy Junkies,
Mystery Road, which even recalls Creedence Clearwater Revival,
Static, inspired by the Chris Isaak generation of dejected singer-songwriters, and
It's Voodoo, a calm tribute to garage-rock of the 1960s.
There is only one dancefloor-oriented ballad, White Sands.
Who knew that Hughes was such a gifted guitarist...
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