In 2003, Montreal's The Stills released their debut album Logic Will Break Your Heart and revealed yet another band indebted to The Cure and Joy Division (yawn). It was a decent enough affair, but so many bands have surfaced with this sound in the last few years that only a select few have made a real impact on critics and hipsters alike (The Rapture and Interpol quickly come to mind).

Three years have past and quite a bit has changed for this Canadian crew. Founding guitarist Greg Paquet has left the group and has his former band members seemingly caught in a good old-fashioned game of switcharoo. Originally their drummer, Dave Hamelin (who was the best part of Logic) is now the lead-guitarist. A new drummer and their touring keyboardist were brought into these new sessions as well and if you think that this changes the dynamic of the band, well, you'd be right; but probably not in the way you'd expect.

Without Feathers sounds almost like an entirely different band, and in a way, it is. It's still a shock however to hear The Stills completely abandon their dark and brooding ways for something that sounds like a mix between early Phantom Planet and Spoon. Musically, Without Feathers is fantastic. It's keyboard/organ heavy vibe and a rootsy guitar solo here and there is a welcome change of pace. The big piece that doesn't fit this new style however is vocalist Tim Fletcher. He's singing these songs like he's still in a Goth influenced band. Evidently Fletch didn't get the memo that the other guys were trying something different.

Vocally, Fletcher just doesn't have the range to keep up with this musical pace and because of it Without Feathers begins to drag painfully along by the half-way point. It actually starts to become a race against time for the listener: which will happen first, will I fall asleep or make it through to the last track? In a way, I kind of feel bad for The Stills. They change their sound for whatever reason (probably because people accused them of being too derivative), but I can't really say that this change is for the better either. Who knows, maybe Tim Fletcher will be the next one to leave. That's the only way I can see The Stills progressing into something better with this new kind of sound.