“In time, all will become clear”. This is a mantra and age-old saying that’s as commonly uttered to appease little boys with grazed knees as well as it is applied to melodramatic teenagers with temporarily broken hearts. Dream-poppers Still Corners formed way back in 2008, but things have really started to heat up in the past year or so – putting out 7″ after 7″ to wet our appetite and keep us thoroughly interested – and we’ve been acting like impatient schoolboys (and girls) ever since.

Now we find ourselves at the tail end of 2011 and we’re finally able to get stuck into the rewards of a debut full-length LP from the London outfit. At first glance, we’re greeted by a couple of old favourites – such as ‘Cuckoo’ and ‘Endless Summer’ – to remind ourselves of what seduced us in the first place, and then comes a whole host of newbies to allow us to dig even deeper.

Opener and pre-album single ‘Cuckoo’ eases us into the record with familiarity and it’s still as spell-binding as it was back in June, as songstress Tessa Murray’s piercingly haunting vocals overlap, overlay and repeat until they etch themselves on your memory. Follower ‘Circulars’ kicks in with an eerie organ and chilling klaxons that sound like stumbling around a dimly lit sideroad on Halloween, culminating the atmospherically unease of the first couple of tracks.

‘Endless Summer’ – first heard over a year and half ago now – makes us realise we’re not in fact stuck in an episode of Goosebumps, as it picks the listener up and drops us quite firmly back into reality with its blissed-out feel – akin to the warm sensation of falling asleep during a hot afternoon while the rays shine in through the window. ‘Into the Trees’ continues this feeling, a track which was written as a response to a quote from Jack Kerouac. The quote in question was the author’s utterance: “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”, an admirable thought I think we’d all agree. The song sounds just as sunny-side-up, a soundscape of ever expanding synths and drums.

The appropriately-titled ‘The White Season’ seems to bring all this sunlit headiness to an abrupt end and welcomes in the cold with a sparse keyboard and Murray’s innocent, wispy vocals sounding like a childlike Nico. The next segment of tracks delve fully into somewhere dark with the menacing ‘I Wrote In Blood’ – sounding like a twisted hop-scotch rhyme, the jagged and jilting ‘Velveteen’ and the ceremonial-sounding ‘Demons’.

Creatures Of An Hour comes to a close with ‘Submarine’, a song that perhaps perfectly exhibits all the different pieces that Still Corners varyingly offer through the album all neatly compacted into a brilliant four-and-a-bit minutes. There’s Murray’s whirling and wailing dulcet tones, an inescapable bassline, Kraut-rock style powering drumbeats and atmospheric organ sounds that echo with intrigue.

“In time, all will become clear”, goes that saying again. And just as the release took a while coming, these words are equally as applicable to the album itself. Despite the inclusion of some already-heard numbers, this isn’t a case of a group repackaging some singles and bulking the record up with throwaway fillers. No, the album flows from start to finish, from the old and through the new. It may feel a bit slow-burning at times for some but given the time, it all pieces together. Still Corners have taken their time to craft an album that’s a whole, instead of disparate tracks. We’re just thankful we waited around for it.

Still Corners – Creatures of an Hour