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Changing labels to the all-Canadian Arts & Crafts, Oceans Will Rise was released to great fanfare, with significant attention directed toward its distinctly heavy metal looking sleeve. “The album cover is a skull purchased on eBay by our friend Gordon Hull who is an artist who designed all our three records. He bought it, gold-leafed it and presented it to his girlfriend in an effort to win her back and it worked. We thought that it was a beautiful symbol of love and reforging connections between humans when its necessary and at its most painful. I think that it was a beautiful thing, a beautiful image to present to people”.

When it came to making the album and the ideas that influenced the songs, Fletcher downplayed the creative process but indicated this record was much more a travelogue than any of the others. “Making a record is making a record and it’s always going to be a full-on immersion for us. We put ourselves into a bubble world and spend a good couple of months twiddling knobs and doing stuff, and that’ll always be the same, but the writing for this album was really inspired by travelling and some of it was written in London, some in Istanbul where we spent a lot of time, and some of it in Japan and also Mexico, looking at the ocean and the night sky and being around people, sitting around fires, forging friendships and living relationships in strange places really informed the writing of this record. It’s really about that, about trying to connect with people”.

The songwriting on Oceans Will Rise was a shared experience for the band with neither Hamelin or Fletcher taking a commanding presence. Fletcher explains, “I wrote “Snow in California”, “Snakecharming the Masses”, helped out a lot in the arrangement of “Panic”, with Dave and Liam. I wrote “Eastern Europe”, “Rooibos/Palm Wine Drinkard”, and “Statue of Sirens”. It was really me, David and Liam working on songs I wrote or songs Dave wrote and getting some magic in the stew pot and shaking it up like that in the arrangement part. Sometimes we’d pick up weird instruments and get a vibe going.”

The initial attraction of Oceans Will Rise came from the collusion of vocals by the two songwriters on several songs, which helped to smooth over the missteps of Without Feathers, making Oceans… a natural progression to the sound and feel of Logic Will Break Your Heart . The vamp-ish opener “Don’t Talk Down” is one of the songs that features both Dave and Tim trading verses.

“I think that “Don’t Talk Down’ ‘I’m With You’ and “Hands on Fire” — those three songs are songs where the vocal duties are shared and I think that’s really representative of where The Stills are right now in that we’ve never been stronger, never felt more confident as band and more comfortable with each other. Even though we’re completely neurotic and insane as people. “Don’t Talk Down” is a direct British reference to a band we love called The Specials. There’s a reference to (Specials song) “Nightclub” in the guitar solo part and you might hear me sing something. Also there’s a vibe to it, a kind of skank, so we were kind of going for The Specials meets The Stills. We’re really big into British ska music and Two-Tone. One more of the influences coming though.”

As expected, Oceans Will Rise has its moments of anger and fear (“Panic”) and of love and sober reflection, the intense “Everything I Build” sounding like a successor to Logic’s… “Animals and Insects” standing next to the undeniable hearts of flowers of “I’m With You” and the bouyant “Being Here” that show the band on a career high.  Without question, the highlight of the album is the one song that sounds the least like them — the tight-wound pulsing drone of “Snakecharming The Masses”.

Fletcher explains the origin of the song:“That was partly written in Turkey and I think that in Turkey they’re into strange rhythms. Zildjian cymbals come from Turkey, so it’s a percussive world. The way that song was written was as a drone. The beat was added to it, that clapping, whip beat and we really followed our instinct as much on this song as we did the whole record. It’s recorded in a very clean way but the songwriting was instinctual and off the cuff and whatever came first was different song by song, and from that birthed other ideas”.

Whilst the intent behind many of the songs could be read from their titles, the curiously named “Roybos/Palm Wine Drinkard”, Oceans Will Rise’s rockiest moment, required further explanation. “There’s palm wine which you can get. I had a friend who brought this palm wine to us in Istanbul when we were there, and it’s basically the African equivalent of moonshine. We got some and it really tripped us out and that song was written on a lot of Turkish coffee and me, Dave and Liam drank a lot of palm wine, and that song was borne out of that in about 45 minutes and we kept playing it all night”.

Before arriving in London the previous morning and self-proclaimed experts at shaking off the jetlag (Tim’s advice – “stay up till at least midnight when you arrive and then take melatonin pills and sleep as long as you can and then you should be ok”. ) the band had been on tour in the states with the Southern rocking Kings of Leon.

In theory it makes for an unexpected double bill that apparently seemed to work, with Fletcher having nothing but kind words to say. “It was our third tour supporting the Kings of Leon. They’re some of our best friends and we really get along with. Speaking of moonshine, we spent time with their family, drinking and eating well with their family in Oklamhoma, and they’re just really cool to us and we’re going to Australia with them in March. We’ve never been there before, and us going over with the Kings of Leon is the best introduction to a country. It’s a great, amazing opportunity.”

The Stills with the Kings of Leon are touring Australia and New Zealand throughout March. Hopefully they’ll find time for some club dates inbetween. Do they need someone to sell merch? I could do with a holiday…

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