The Last Exit. Still Corners

Except for a recent single, Still Corners has been absent from this blog since 2013. In the meantime I seem to have missed two albums and that for a band whose first two albums I liked a lot at the time but have no recollection of at all, I noticed just now. They disappeared in that digital labyrinth called external hard discs, the killer of all deepening of relationships with music.

Enter The Last Exit, Still Corner's first album in the 20s. Earlier this week I reviewed a box set of the studio albums of Chris & Carla, The Walkabouts' front duo, called 'Velvet Fog'. It is as if they have a new, slightly more dreamy album in 2021. The mood on The Last Exit is so similar and captured me from the second listening session onwards. I let myself be carried away by the music this duo produces. Whether slow and atmospheric or faster paced and atmospheric, the songs totally work for me.

With The Last Exit Tessa Murray and Greg Hughes release their fifth album together since 2011. Instrumentalist Hughes and vocalist Murray together manage to create an atmosphere that is dreamy but has side steps to Americana and folk, think Chris Isaak i.e., the sound of his lead guitarist James Calvin Wilsey. (Who died in 2018 I just found out because of writing this.) Hughes is originally from Arizona and I am quite certain that I hear the sound of the wind sweeping through a deserted mining town way down in the desert on this album.

So, it's time to ask myself the question why Still Corners now for the third time appeals to me near immediately but has been discarded somewhere on the pile of records and time? Of course that is the way of nearly all music, but in my post of 2013 I mention that the debut album, 'Creatures Of An Hour' only barely missed my top 10 for 2011. So, how can I not have a single recollection of the album? There's no answer I'm afraid. All I can say is that The Last Exit deserves to be heard more often for certain.

Getting to know the album better the Americana connection gets bigger and better. I just notice it much more than in the first sessions. In my recollection, and as you can glean from the above that may be shaky territory, Still Corners was more electronicaly inclined. On The Last Exit the guitars certainly play a large role over a mostly sober, but well-woundng rhythm section. It results in a part melancholy, part dreamy album where the music perfectly accompanies the stories Tessa Murray sings and escapes with some nice, solo lines drenched in reverb, vibrato and echo. If Chris & Carla had made an album together with Wilsey it had sounded something like this, with the exception of the absence of the beauty and the beast duets and harmonies of Chris Eckman and Carla Torgerson.

Once again I'm extremely pleasantly surprised by Still Corners. Will they surprise me again in 2023/24 or will I finally be fully prepared for an album by the duo? Only time will tell.

Wo.

You can order or listen to The Last Exit here:

https://stillcorners.bandcamp.com/album/the-last-exit

or listen to our Spotify Playlist to find out what we are writing about:

https://open.spotify.com/user/glazu53/playlist/6R9FgPd2btrMuMaIrYeCh6?si=KI6LzLaAS5K-wsez5oSO2g