by RUPERT BOTTENBERG

Maybe it's my Kentucky blood, but the first time I heard the band name the Stills, I pictured banjos, shotguns and moonshine. Suffice to say, they aren't much on overalls and they do wear shoes.

The name was more likely selected to suggest promo photos and glamour shots, appropriate considering the substantial press coverage the Montreal quartet has garnered - here, Stateside and in the U.K. - in a freakishly short time.

Given this, the one thing "the Stills" doesn't imply is an absence of motion. Many parties, fans and detractors alike, might in fact argue that the Stills have moved way too fast for their own good.

Two years ago they were four underfed, unkempt kids among the hundreds, thousands even, crowding the stages of New York City's grimy rock bars over any given week. By the time their first EP Rememberese was ready, they'd blown off any number of major-label subsidiaries to ink a deal with Vice Records, the musical offshoot of the smartass free magazine, also once of Montreal. And by the time their album Logic Will Break Your Heart was released, they'd made the bands-to-watch-out-for lists of both Rolling Stone and the U.K.'s NME, they'd been interviewed by Joan Jett and had supported the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Interpol, the Rapture and Echo & the Bunnymen. Slots with Ryan Adams and at the U.K.'s Leeds and Reading festivals followed, as has a recent sold-out stand at NYC's Bowery Ballroom. And all this before playing a proper hometown headline gig.

The day the skanking died

If you owned a pair of Doc Martens in the '90s, you might remember a local somewhat-ska band called the Undercovers, signed to Stomp Records. Though not one Undercover was old enough to drink legally at the time, they had chops. Enough in fact to attract the production skills and general guru/svengali involvement of Gus Coriandoli, onetime frontman of Montreal's popular Me Mom & Morgentaler.

"He was getting us into Billy Bragg, Elvis Costello, the Smiths," says Stills drummer Dave Hamelin. "Basically, we were discovering music. That band fell apart because we were maturing too quickly to have any consistent aesthetic. By the end we were a new-wave-pop-punk band, a Costello punk 'n' roll kinda thing, and it seemed that nobody wanted to hear that music at that time. So were like, know what? We hate our band, so let's break up."

From there, the lads went the split-personality route, on the one hand taking fun, easy-to-handle gigs with the Kingpins, the Fez-Tones and pop-punk unit the Dropouts. On the other, they were privately chiselling away at something deeper, darker and more worked out. With a cheap four-track at their disposal, Hamelin and singer/guitarist Tim Fletcher began formulating tunes that eschewed the bright colours and bells 'n' whistles of the Undercovers, favouring straightforward guitars and a melancholy lyrical bent.

Bassist Oliver Crowe and occasional keyboardist/effective fifth Still Liam O'Neil, both former Undercovers, got on board, as did guitarist Greg Paquet - and Coriandoli too, in his way, egging them into a summer-long, show-a-week residency in the Big Apple.

Gotham gang-up

Coriandoli and his Me Mom bandmate Adam "Bix" Berger had, in the late '90s, moved to NYC and started a band called Smitty's - an aerodynamic power-pop affair that built a following on the Lower East Side if nowhere else. The pair's vetting of the Stills struck a sad note of vicariousness.

"There is some part of it where they're like, we wanted this to happen for us, and now we'll make it happen for the Stills. They paved the way for us. They're crazy - they went over there on I don't what kind of confidence, no budget certainly, without knowing anybody. They fucked up, and now know what not to do in that situation."

And what they should do, starting with an unassuming gig at a club where the keyboard player from Interpol worked. "It was actually a warm-up before our first real show," says Fletcher. "Not too many people showed up and nobody knew who we were."

"Nobody," concurs Hamelin. "Except Interpol were there, just hanging out. Their record hadn't come out yet, so we'd never even heard them. But we became friends then, and everything sorta springboarded. We were playing more shows, more people were talking, label people were coming by. It all snowballed from there on in."

Keep in mind that a major-label feeding frenzy was underfoot in NYC at the time. "It's like the Eye of Sauron," says Fletcher. "The Strokes came out and then all of a sudden, the Eye turns to New York. Oh shit, this long-dormant city that we haven't been looking at - there's something happening there.

"We looked at the cards we had in our deck, and we thought, Vice has been there since the beginning, Bix works there, all the Vice guys are super cool and they're from Montreal, they'll allow us artistic freedom to the maximum, plus they know all kinds of creative people. When you've been working really hard on something and they've been there since the beginning, you want your friends to be involved, people you trust."

"Once," says Hamelin, "we were drunk and Shane [Smith, Vice honcho] was like, 'If you don't sign with us, I'll break your fucking legs.' Nobody else said that! At least he's passionate. Nobody else threatened us, so let's go with them."

Defeat with a beat

If the band's spirits were buoyed by their lucky streak, Logic Will Break Your Heart doesn't reflect it. Fletcher and Hamelin nod in game acceptance when the term "mope rock" is thrown at them, because it suits the Stills' roaring, narcotic wash of guitar and lyrics painted in tones of grey.

"The record is about defeatism," says Hamelin, "personal and political. You know how, when you're in CÉGEP and you have all kinds of ideas, you're fervently political and interested in ideological concepts? You get older and you see everything in that context dissolve. It's too hard to go out there and mean something. Like the baby boomers - I feel that we're going in that same direction. It's about giving up. That's why it's called Logic Will Break Your Heart. Even the love songs allude to that defeatism. We wanted to keep that emotional aspect consistent throughout the record - the kids of the baby boomers giving up in the 21st century."

The 21st century, for its part, hasn't given up on the Stills and their album. "It's done well critically, although often something that does well critically doesn't gel with audiences. But now it's happening that there are tons of people coming to our shows in cities we've never been to. We sold out a show in Lawrence, Kansas - what the fuck? Lawrence, Kansas?

"We sold out the Bowery Ballroom, three weeks before the show. That's a sign that people are coming. All the shows on our upcoming tours are selling out."

Interesting choice of words. The band is pinned between a dangerously inflated, unpredictable hype machine ("We're suspicious of it," says Fletcher, "and people outside of our band are even more suspicious of it") and a bitter backlash - particularly fierce in their hometown's music scene, where resentment and divisiveness are job one.

"Somebody here told me, you're a sellout, you signed to an American label," says Hamelin. "What, am I supposed to stay here and complain? So we took our show on the road. You can go to Toronto and break into the Canadian scene. But we wanted to break into the international scene."

Canadians breakin'

Right then, next stop England. While Logic will only hit stands there on Feb. 24, the first single "Still in Love" punctured the charts and the music rags have glommed right on to the band. The U.K. is the real trial by fire, given how British the Stills could be said to sound.

Says Fletcher, "People there are either saying, 'Brilliant! You're the best band ever!' Or they're like, 'You guys got some nice haircuts and that's about it.'"

"Since the Beatles," adds Hamelin, "music has been Britain's number-one export, so rock 'n' roll is very important to British people. So if they like you, it's amazing. If they hate you you're fucked. So far we've been on their good side."

Yanks and Brits seem to agree - the kids are alright. "I think it's interesting to them," says Hamelin, "that we're not American and not from England either. We're from this place called Montreal. There are a lot of great bands coming out of Canada right now - Broken Social Scene, Hidden Cameras, the Unicorns, the Dears. There's a certain vibe going on, among mainstream Canadian bands and in the underground too. I think Canadians are getting their due right now."

"The Eye of Sauron has turned to Canada," says Fletcher. "I don't know if there's a Canadian sound, in terms of sonics, but there are certain thematic concerns, lyrically, and the way they're talked about. There's an earnestness to Canadians, and an interest in being intelligent about it."

With Poxy at Cabaret du Plateau on Saturday, Feb. 7, 8pm, $12.50

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