WORKS
FAR RIDER
Ahead of a massive tour throughout Europe and the US, Still Corners released the seven-minute desert-noir odyssey, ‘Far Rider’.
With the sun at its peak a weary desert traveller picks their way across the soft sandy floor trying to forget a lost love or maybe a past best forgotten. Crystal clear guitar lines drift in and out as the bass weaves and snakes over a tight drum beat. Tessa Murray croons steady as a pulse, as the song winds like a caravan toward the orange horizon.
Tessa explains, “This song is about leaving, lost love and finding yourself somewhere on the journey, really it’s about redemption. I recently drove 6000 miles across the southwest to feel the sun on my face and think. We used the dreamlike nature of the song to capture the landscape and a hypnotic feel to conjure up the long and lonely travel days.”
HEAVY DAYS
Following the release of their widescreen, transportive fifth studio album The Last Exit in January of 2021, Still Corners return with a welcome bid for hope in the form of sweeping, propulsive new track "Heavy Days". Contrary to the the literal weight of its title, "Heavy Days" emanates light and optimism, its energetic musicality imploring the listener to continue moving forward, not to be bogged down by the shadows and to bask in the beauty of each moment.
Tessa from the band comments on the track: "Sometimes it all feels like too much, there's a lot to take in reading the news all the time. We wanted to write a reminder to put the phone down now and again and get out there and live life to the fullest while you can."
LIVE IN STUDIO
Following the success of SLOW AIR, Still Corners released their Abbey Road sessions, including a cover of Richard and Linda Thompson's The Calvary Cross and a live studio recording of Black Lagoon.
THE LAST EXIT
THE LAST EXIT is the fifth studio album from Still Corners, which will be released on 22nd January 2021 on Wrecking Light Records.
With the shimmering desert noir sound the band has become known for, THE LAST EXIT takes you on a hypnotic journey, one filled with dilapidated towns, mysterious shapes on the horizon, and long trips that blur the line between what’s there and not there. Greg says, “We found something out there in the desert – something in the vast landscapes that went on forever."
THE LAST EXIT consists of eleven beautifully crafted songs with organic instrumentation, clean-toned guitar, spacious drums and the teardrop voice of Tessa Murray. Album highlights include “The Last Exit”, “White Sands” and “Shifting Dunes” all of which evoke the vast space of the desert and rolling unconcerned skies.
THE LAST EXIT VIDEO
"The Last Exit" is the final chapter of the Still Corners Road Trilogy. What began with "The Trip" and was followed by "The Message" concludes with the stunning "The Last Exit". Inspired by the 1975 film Picnic at Hanging Rock, "The Last Exit" video finds Tessa pulled into the mysterious rocks of Joshua Tree. Tessa describes the idea behind the video -
"In a world where everyone thinks all the corners of the map are filled in we like to suggest there's something beyond that, something eternal in the landscape and in our psyche. Maybe you don't see it every day but it's there and that's what we are trying to connect to."
With a galloping beat, smoky crooning vocals and the clean round-tone guitar the band has become known for, "The Last Exit" races down a lonely highway to destination unknown. Beautifully crafted with a grand piano ending, "The Last Exit" will remind you of another world beyond the one you see.
CRYING VIDEO
Heartache and hope wind their way through Still Corners gorgeous new song "Crying", written during the pandemic. Tessa says, "The only constant in life is change, this song is about a breakup during a difficult time but it's also about coping with a fast moving uncertain world. Our video shows the immense universe and inevitable change of the seasons. Everything is in flux and that's the only thing that is certain." With spacious drums, acoustic and lap steel guitar and an intimate, bittersweet vocal, 'Crying' reminds you that all things will eventually pass.
WHITE SANDS
A desert-noir soundtrack in miniature, ‘White Sands’ tells a classic ghost story of a phantom who roams the dunes and highways scaring travellers as they cross the land. Tessa Murray croons over a quick beat, clean-tone guitar and shimmering atmospherics. The accompanying visuals show a ghostly face on the horizon and include lyrics in English and Spanish.
SLOW AIR
SLOW AIR is the fourth album by Still Corners, released on Wrecking Light on 17 August 2018. Evoking the atmospheric sounds Still Corners are known for, Slow Air continues the band's journey with an album full of tension and brooding all the while wrapped in a reverb laden dream.
The album title is derived from the sultry heat in Texas which causes everything and everyone to slow down. While writing Slow Air, Still Corners found inspiration in the change of leaving England for the States and traveling around the massive expanse that is North America from the deserts of Texas and Arizona to the beaches of California and mountainous regions of the north east.
Recorded in a new studio designed by Greg Hughes in Austin, TX, Still Corners focused on a recording process that was as fluid and minimal as possible. Using a variety of microphones both old and new, the band recorded and mixed this new set of songs in three months. Keeping everything fresh and not over-thinking moved the album to the finish line faster than any album Still Corners had written and recorded before. Joe Laporta made the finishing touches at Sterling Sound in NYC.
BLACK LAGOON
Black Lagoon is the lead single from Still Corners 4th album Slow Air. With clean toned electric guitar, a driving beat, and the smoky crooning of Tessa Murray, Black Lagoon contains the shimmering atmospherics Still Corners are well known for. The cinematic video that accompanies the track finds the band on a journey from the desert to the ocean in search of a lost Eden. Filmed over a month in California, Arizona and Texas and shot on a small handheld cinema camera, the band travels across America in a white mustang convertible searching and reaching into the unknown.
THE PHOTOGRAPH
The Photograph is the second single from Still Corners August 17, 2018 release, SLOW AIR. The Photograph is an elegant darkly romantic torch song dedicated to a lover long gone, only a photograph left to remind. Simmering clean-tone electric guitar mixed with huge bended distorted licks collide with Tessa Murray's vocals crooning softly on the verse and digging in more on the chorus to create an emotional tapestry about lost love.
The accompanying visuals have Tessa striking out along a lonesome highway to a destination unknown. The black and white film was captured by the band in the Arizona desert.
THE MESSAGE
The Message is the third single from Slow Air. It is a song about leaving someone and telling them on voicemail. Atmospheric clean-tone guitar mixes with Tessa Murray's voice as it floats over a lonesome highway recording.
DEAD BLUE
DEAD BLUE was the third LP Still Corners released and the first on their newly formed label Wrecking Light on September 16, 2016.
Written and recorded in a makeshift studio in a beach house in Deal, Kent, this album was inspired by the often sombre vibe of this small and beautiful seaside town. Large bay windows in the living room gave stunning views of the beach and sea just outside. This large expanse of blue was a constantly moving feast - little boats, big ships, seals, massive clouds, storms, lightning. Overall the days were calm, dark, and cloudy giving the water an endless expansive feel which directly inspired the title - Dead Blue. Focusing less on guitar and relying more on a collection of analogue synthesisers, Still Corners continued to explore their brand of atmospheric music with a more melancholic and mechanic sythesised sound.
LOST BOYS VIDEO
Lost Boys was first video directed and filmed by Greg Hughes. It sees the band performing in a pulsing, brooding underworld for the song inspired by Brian Wilson, the original lost boy.
STRANGE PLEASURES
Still Corners second album STRANGE PLEASURES was released May 7, 2013 on Sub Pop records. Singles included Fireflies, Berlin Lovers and sleeper hit - The Trip.
Written directly after Creatures of an Hour, Greg and Tessa introduced synthesisers blended with guitar with large amounts of reverb for a fuller more dreamy sound.
The live shows consisted of Tessa, Greg, Leon Dufficy (Winter Drones, Psychic Markers, My Sad Captains) and newly added drummer Jack Gooderham.
BERLIN LOVERS VIDEO
For their first official single from Strange Pleasures, Berlin Lovers, Still Corners approached Christian Sorenson Hansen with an idea for a video to be filmed in a roller skating rink with kids. Christian came up with a simple and beautiful idea with a little love story running throughout. It's a was filmed in one day at Skate King in Seattle.
FIREFLIES VIDEO
An epic dream pop song, once again directed by Christian Sorenson Hansen, Fireflies was filmed in the desert just outside Portland in the Painted Hills, an ancient river bed with varying hues built up over millions of years. The final sequence was filmed at a friend's pool and by a bonfire on the Willamette River at dusk.
ALL I KNOW LIVE AT WFUV
This is a little early morning radio session of Still Corners performing a stripped down version of the song All I Know. An improvised guitar solo completes the middle section.
CREATURES OF AN HOUR
CREATURES OF AN HOUR was the first LP Still Corners released on Sub Pop on October 11 2011. Recorded by Tessa and Greg in the band's Greenwich, London based studio, most of these songs came from duo's earliest writing sessions and demos while they both lived in Putney.
Reflecting a love of psychedelic English folk music, Broadcast, and the BBC's Radiophonic Workshop, Creatures of an Hour was met with wide critical acclaim.
Rehearsals with the newly formed live band consisted of Leon Dufficy (Winter Drones, Psychic Markers, My Sad Captains) and Luke Jarvis (Psychic Markers) with Greg on drums. The band's live shows largely consisted of turning off all the lights and playing against a large projection screen of visuals made by Leon Dufficy.
CUCKOO VIDEO
Cuckoo was the first single released by Sub Pop and featured on both a double a-side 7" with Endless Summer and on the band's first LP, Creatures of an Hour.
Directed by Lucy Dyson, the Cuckoo video continued the ghostly theme first explored through the Wish video, with Tessa trapped in a pink haze.
INTO THE TREES VIDEO
Oliver Murray directed the video for Into the Trees, the second single from Creatures of an Hour.
In the Rolling Stone premiere, Greg explained, "the song is a response to a quote from Jack Kerouac...'Ah, life is a gate, a way, a path to Paradise anyway, why not live for fun and joy and love or some sort of girl by a fireside, why not go to your desire and LAUGH...'"
ENDLESS SUMMER
VIDEO
The video for Endless Summer was directed by Georgia Hudson and filmed in South East London.
DON'T FALL IN LOVE/WISH
On August 12, 2010 Still Corners released their DON'T FALL IN LOVE/WISH 7-inch on legendary British psychedelic label The Great Pop Supplement. Side A contained the single Don't Fall in Love with the B-side Wish. Written and recorded by Greg Hughes in the band's studio in Greenwich, London. The cover art was photographed by film maker/ photographer Garry Sykes and is a re-creation of an outtake from Rosemary's Baby. Unusually the band decided to release the B-side Wish as the first single and brought on board videographer Lucy Dyson to film the Virgin Suicides inspired video filmed in Greenwich Park, London and shot on 16 mm. The Great Pop Supplement ran a first pressing of 350 which sold out the first day leading to a second pressing which also sold out in a few days. The combination of the pressing/sales and video led to the band being courted by a number of labels. In the end Sub Pop flew over to see the band play at St. Giles church in London and signed the band in the Angel Pub by Denmark St.
REMEMBER PEPPER?
Remember Pepper? was the first release from Still Corners. Named after a very short bit of dialogue in the film Daytrippers by director Greg Mottola, it was written and recorded in the band's studio in Greenwich, London in 2007. This six song EP was self-released and sent to as many college radio stations as Greg could find in the UK and US on CD with a little note. It was quickly picked up by Norman Records in Leeds, UK and sold out shortly thereafter. Only 500 CDs were ever pressed.