The Stills

Oceans Will Rise

[4/5]

Like a softcore photo spread of the Amish, Vice Records and the Stills were always an uneasy marriage. The group’s first two albums, less snark-and-vomit than earnest-and-melodic, were Territorial bridge-and-tunnel bridesmaids instead of NYC black-clad brides. Shedding Vice and crossing the border to Arts&Crafts has both opened up the hook bag-it’s by far the most readily accessible release in the A&C catalog-and heightened the Stills’ anxieties to pathological levels, like setting bullet points from An Inconvenient Truth to upbeat tunes. Dread and decay haunts "Everything I Build," while "Dinosaurs" ("The Earth will shake/the windows will break") and "Snow In California" ("Bring things back to life now," with a closing guitar crescendo like an air raid alert) don’t exactly evince uplift. But ultimately their romantic optimism shines through the gloom with propulsive harmonies in the should-be-hits ("Being Here," "I’m With You") that refresh like a Molson baptism, a new beginning on a rising tide. (ARTS&CRAFTS) Erick Haight

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