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Nov 07, 2011 By Laura Studarus Photography by Colleen Police Still Corners

It was nearly midnight when Still Corners took the stage at The Bootleg Theater in Los Angeles last Saturday. While perhaps cliché to note, it was a fitting hour for the bewitching quartet (Greg Hughes, Tessa Murray, Leon Dufficy, and Luke Jarvis) to perform. The last stop on their tour in support of their Sub Pop debut, Creatures of An Hour, the London-based musicians brought with them a fittingly ghostly ambiance.

It would be easy to simply call the set ethereal—as singer Murray’s girlish soprano floats above the Hughes’ tightly constructed compositions like an otherworldly specter. It would also be easy to throw comparisons at them—likening the project to the art rock of Blonde Redhead, or mentioning the atmosphere of Broadcast. But that would only tell half the story, as the admitted cinephiles breathe pure filmic atmosphere into their performance. It isn’t just the home movies they run behind them as they play. (Even though those provided to be a mesmerizing backdrop of abstract images and vintage film scenes). Still Corners’ music seemingly rests on that razor’s edge between beauty and unease—a soundtrack to that moment in a film just before everything starts to go wrong. (Perhaps an all-too-appropriate theme for Los Angeles—a city seemingly built on celluloid, and all-too-often flirting with ruin.)

Their ability to shift moods and twist meaning was only highlighted by the set’s lone cover “I’m on Fire.” In Murray’s sweet voice—accompanied by a lone guitar, Bruce Springsteen’s paean to unfulfilled lust became the echo of love lost. Forever. Romantic fulfillment? Perhaps not for the characters of Still Corners’ oeuvre. But after the engrossing performance, more than one audience member left carrying the seeds of a musical infatuation.

Still Corners - Creatures of an Hour by subpop

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