Dave Hamlin, former drummer and current singer/guitarist for Montreal’s the Stills, says he’s been listening to a lot of Dylan lately, particularly his early electric work.
“You know [at the Newport Folk Festival] they booed “Like a Rolling Stone.” Pete Seeger wanted to cut the [electric] cords.”
Hamlin says he feels an affinity with the scorned Dylan, and it’s not hard to understand why. Although their post-punk heavy 2003 debut, Logic Will Break Your Heart(Vice) received a plenty of positive press, there were just as many detractors accusing the band of trend following opportunism and jumping into a New York scene stuffed to the gills with artsy eighties revival acts.
“We were really green. It got the best of us emotionally,” he says of the critical accusations.
The tensions led to the departure of guitarist Greg Paquet, which Hamlin says was amicable.
“The vibe we were getting from him,” says Hamlin of Paquet, “was that he didn’t think being in a band was all it was cracked up to be. He thought it was stupid, and he’s right. It is. A lot of people in the music business don’t love music. Everyone’s just blowing smoke up peoples’ asses. I think that really got to him.”
The band retooled, Hamlin moving from drums to guitar and sharing vocal duties with Tim Fletcher, and released this year’s Without Feathers(Vice), a radical departure of the highest degree, sounding more like roots rock in the vein of Neil Young, with nary a hint of the Cure influence from their past. But Hamlin insists the change has nothing to do with Paquet’s departure.
“I wrote a lot of the guitar parts for Greg on the first album…He was not a driving creative force. But it was a highly reactionary record. We didn’t want to be lumped in with that scene. We didn’t want to be dance punks. We didn’t want to be another fucking hi-hat band.”
And that’s clear right from the start of Without Feathers, which opens with warmly distorted guitars, Hammond organ and bright twinkling piano progressions. If the band was looking to make the exact opposite of their debut, they couldn’t have done any better.
“It was good,” Hamlin says. “We got a lot of stuff out of our system. We’re kind of over our demons. I think we’re finally a good outfit. We’re excited to go out and conquer the world.”
