I'll get straight to the point. The new Stills album is by far the biggest musical disappointment of the year. I'm really glad I had a chance to hear it before spending any money on it.
Anyway, here's the supposed background story... A great band from Montreal releases a really good first album. It gets alot of critical acclaim, makes them moderately popular, and predictably, has it's share of detractors that label them as things like "unoriginal" or "new-new wave". They probably took those criticisms (or themselves) too seriously, so they decide to make some changes. First they kick out their guitarist. Then their drummer, who co-wrote material for the first album says "if you don't let me sing and play guitar, I'll quit"; and they actually agree to this! (thanks Dave Grohl - now every drummer has a huge ego and wants to sing). Then they proceed to make an album full of boring mid-tempo crap. I know, I've played stuff from it on my radio show, but that was just because I needed to fill my Canadian content quota.
The album is called 'Without Feathers'. I guess this an attempt to further distance themselves from the first album, which has feathers all over the cover. As if the music doesn't do that enough! In trying to be different, they went too far away from their original sound, while also ignoring everything that worked for them in the past. It sounds like a completely different band; and that's not a good thing in this case.
