Future Islands is a new band to us, and we kind of really like them now…
“On the Water” is their third album, and as far as we can tell, it’s shaping up to be their best. To steal an excellent summation from our friends over at Pitchfork, I think this is the perfect way to describe their new album:
“Samuel T. Herring, lyricist and lion-throated singer of Baltimore synth-romantics Future Islands, has written a lot of break-up songs. He penned some pretty vitriolic ones on the band’s 2008 debut, Wave Like Home, and then he wrote an entire record’s worth on their terrific 2010 release, In Evening Air. About four songs into their latest — which contains such boldfaced melodrama as “I loved you and I still do” — you get the idea that this guy might be something of a Sisyphus, relieved at last of the whole boulder-up-the-hill business but doomed to sit on the receiving end of an “It’s not you, it’s me” conversation ad infinitum.”
(Check out the whole review here.)
So that pretty much says it all. Why try to rewrite the wheel when it’s been written so well already by some real professionals? You don’t.
But all the same, I want to recommend Future Islands to you my dear readers…
Enjoy!
-B
