Complete Short Stories - Perfectly Still

  by Benjamin Howarth

published: 3 / 3 / 2011

Label: One Blank Channel
Format: CD

intro

Enjoyable fusion of indie pop and shoegaze on debut album from London-based band, the Complete Short Stories

I rather suspect that the seven members of The Complete Short Stories didn’t make great strides forward in their respective professional careers during 2010. Not for them, the home-cooked meal, an episode of 'Masterchef' and an early night, before rising with the sun shining and the birds twittering for another productive day in the office. Instead, they roamed through North London’s many cultural hotspots (The Lexington, The Wilmington Arms and, of course, Madame Jojos) honing their mixture of indie pop and shoe gaze-noise into a set of ten songs. When they weren’t out and about playing these songs in public, they were beavering away in their local recording studio’s evening shift, before eventually stumbling out with a morning head into the cold of November with ten new songs. A nice, grainy picture taken in Dungeness was slapped on the cover and, bingo, a debut album was ready to go without even needing to find a record label. It is surely but a small step from here to the ultimate of all career-wreckers, the UK tour. As is becoming increasingly common, ’Perfectly Still’ has actually been available to those in the know in download format since last year, on the Bandcamp website. Now, for the benefit of technophobes, traditionalists and people with unreliable broadband connections (this reviewer is in all three camps) comes an ‘official release date’ and a CD version. In the background, the Complete Short Stories mix traces of Godspeed You Black Emperor’s screeching strings, Arcade Fire’s crescendos and the Aislers Set’s loose, frantic indie into a whole that doesn’t end up sounding anything much like any of those bands, but cleverly avoid sounding too heavy. The wide range of sounds and busy arrangements don’t distract from the main attraction - Kerry Adamson’s catchy indie/folk tunes. On ‘Value The One You Love’, they take a stately arrangement, similar to the classicism of Robert Kirby’s arrangements for Nick Drake before gently slipping the strings out in favour of a snarling guitar part and a tune that reminds me of the nearly-ballads you used to find on the second half of mid-90s Blur albums. They prove that one of the best ways to find a style that is your own is not to try and "fit in", but to pull inspiration from all kinds of places. Because they obviously work well together as a unit, I imagine that - assuming they are still a band in a decade’s time - they’ll have developed to the extent that they look back on their debut only as a "decent first try." But, for the moment, this record is more than that. With ‘Perfectly Still’ on the shelves, its going to be hard to distract their bosses’ attentions from what they’ve really been up to, but even as seven P45s drop onto seven doormats, I think the Complete Short Stories will look back on 2010 as a year well spent. 2011 might be even better.

Track Listing:-