Stilljill is a Los Angeles-based trio made up of Alex Stills (guitar and vocals), Jill Parker (drums) and Anina Denove (keys and vocals). Combining the ethereal textures of dream pop with the driving momentum of indie rock, the band craft a sound capable of intricacy without sacrificing heft, with elements of folk and psych rounding out the style.
In preparation of their debut EP, Waterslides, March saw the first of a series of singles from Stilljill. Lead track ‘Bake’ introduces the sense of scale and power of which the band are capable. Weighty, syncopated drums compel the song forward as it swells from its folky beginnings, Stills’s vocals soaring above. The scope is mirrored in the themes too, the track exploring not just personal narratives but Californian drought, and also reaching back through the generations to bring to life ancestral emotion too.
The song is typical of Waterslides and the general Stilljill aesthetic, using personal and contemporary experiences to evoke things older and more widespread. There’s something primal about the soundscapes, grasping towards some shared human core where the fundamental experiences are held. Love, heartbreak, injustices both cultural and political, the emotions from which none of us are free.
But there is also a recognition that such forces are not experienced equally. Waterslides is an EP concerned with the LGBTQIA+ experience, the name signifying the fluidity and constant motion of identity. The idea that being the person you are is thrilling and terrifying and never certain, prone to sharp turns and sudden drops into the deep end.
If ‘Bake’ is a surrender to this ride, then the title track comes to feel the excitement of its uncharted path. For in grounding the struggle in wider contexts—that of the environment, of history, humanity itself—Stilljill emerge with the tools to not only reflect but to become oneself, and to keep on becoming.
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‘Waterslides’ is out now and available from the Stilljill Bandcamp page alongside the other singles in the series.