FUTURE ISLANDS - Singles

Their debut album Wave Like Home was released way back in 2008 but Baltimore-based Future Islands only lost their live TV virginity two weeks ago. The band performed ‘Seasons (waiting on you)’ on The Late Show with David Letterman to rapturous applause from the presenter and audience, swiftly followed by online media praise.

Watching that performance was the first time I had ever seen the band in the flesh and lead singer Samuel Herring stood out as a strikingly eccentric individual. His Simon Cowell pants belted above his waste, twisting, shimmying and fist pumping to the Synthpop rhythm of his band, with an unflinching eye contact. It’s hard to think of a frontman with that much stage presence at the moment. As a YouTube comment puts it, ‘The only way that performance could have been more sincere is if he started crying, fell over, pissed himself, then floated up to heaven’ (quite the compliment).  However, what stuck out most was the man’s thespian croon. There’s a haunting moment where he lets out a growl of devilish ferocity, not dissimilar to a Death Metal or Hardcore Punk frontman and grabs the air with such neck-tingling conviction you believe he’s literally hanging onto something.

The version of ‘Seasons (waiting on you)’ that made it onto the band’s latest album Singles, doesn’t contain that peculiar moment, but it doesn’t really matter. A warm eeriness to their music still exists, in tracks like ‘Back In The Tall Grass’, which wear’s romantic nostalgia of the American sort, proudly on its sleeve. Herring’s lyrics are parables on the human soul; they seem to favour possibility over pessimism, but never make it too obvious. ‘I’ve seen the way that bodies lock and bodies tend to break’ he sings over ‘Light House’, one of the more anthemic moments on the album.  

At times the music feels very familiar. Second track, ‘Spirit’ owes a lot to Human League’s Dare, yet something more stirring than Phil Oakey’s monotone irks beneath Herring’s odd, soulful vocal. It allows the band’s music to transcend pop simplicity, opening up various alleyways of emotion.

Reverb is the chosen effect of a lot of bands at the moment but Future Islands use it for more than just making guitars sound a bit bigger. It washes amongst the quivering synth of ‘Like The Moon’, surrounded by tender chords and chugging clasps of bass that somehow manage to be subtle and euphoric all at once. This balance is something that the band pull-off well. 

Just as everything starts to seem a bit comfortable, that demonic vocal creeps up again, under the sludgy guitar of ‘Fall From Grace’, crawling out of Herring’s mouth, till the song slips back into shining bell chimes. 

Singles has got the heart of a lion and the mind of an outcast. Its flirtation with the darker fringes of pop is what makes it an extremely powerful album, a feat that may just push the band further than they’ve ever been.

Words: Nad Khan