STILLMAN: The Weightless EP
Posted: May 28th, 2005, by Tom LeinsStillman is the one-man-band alias of Chaz Craik – ex-lead guitarist in Cab – the Britpop band that never were. However, lest i mislead anyone, Stillman has little in common with the cheeky nostalgic bounce of Britpop. After spending two years on the dole eating Readybrek and baked beans (never in the same bowl!) Chaz honed his bittersweet melodies to near-perfection and cobbled together this remarkable EP using a couple of guitars and a creaking PC. With a voice pitched somewhere between Tom McCrae and Magnet’s Even Johansen and a batch of wistful vignettes that put me in mind of the cracked poetry of a post-Britpop Paul Simon, ‘The Weightless EP’ is a truly special record. This is music that glows with confidence; music shot-through with a brave ambitious streak – akin to a dole-queue version of Elbow. Heart-warming stuff.
Tom Leins
Tom is a relative obscurity in diskantland. All we know of him is that he's from Devon and that he writes a fanzine called 'Voices from Downtroddendom', so draw your own conclusions from that. Our conclusions are that he's probably got a funny accent and a bit too much time on his hands. So he'll fit right in around here.