The Stills: “Snow in California”

I listened to the first Stills album voraciously. It was one of the first big albums I found my way to after Britpop hit the skids (1997-2000 or being pretty much the peak of my music fandom), and it’s easy to see why: the Montreal natives’ music seemed to be cut from the same cloth as the bands I followed from afar through the NME website. I remember listening to it a lot on my original 5 GB iPod during my last trip to the UK in 2003 and thinking it was the perfect soundtrack for riding the London Underground.

I also enjoyed the second Stills album, which had a surprisingly warmer “Bringing it All Back Home” feel to it, but despite my initial enthusiasm for a few of the songs, I never really developed quite the love affair with it that I had with “Logic Will Break Your Heart.” If anything this ambivalent impression has only increased as the album has aged.

With this in mind, I (like everyone else) greeted the Stills’ third album, “Oceans Will Rise,” warily. Would it be a triumphant return to edgy form or was the band’s more wishy-washy stylistic shift permanent? The jury’s still our for me. I can say that not much seems to jump out at me initially, with one notable exception: “Snow in California,” which recalls the greatness of “Logic” with its cool, sparse production, simple, angular guitar riffs, and lush, dreamy vocals. I’ve been listening to this one on repeat for days now, and I suspect it will remain a classic for me even if the rest of the album never quite catches up.