yeah that was an excellent profile
― call all destroyer, Tuesday, 25 March 2014 00:00 (ten years ago) link
Four or five years ago, my old band played a festival with Future Islands at a small festival in France. We'd just gotten to the venue and were kind of snacking, decompressing from the drive, etc., in the green room, when Sam popped his head in. He was carrying a large laundry sack.
He really sweetly and enthusiastically introduced himself to all of us and said something to the effect of:
"Hey, I'm Sam. It is SO nice to meet all of you. Anyway, I was going to try and find a place to do some laundry... would any of you like me to grab your laundry and bring it back to you all clean?"
We were flabbergasted. It was the nicest gesture EVER. I still think of it often.
― Dave Depper (Davey D), Tuesday, 25 March 2014 06:50 (ten years ago) link
:D
― MikoMcha, Tuesday, 25 March 2014 09:31 (ten years ago) link
^srsly every anecdote i've heard about dude (including mine upthread) makes him sound like the best guy ever
― °ㅇ๐ْ ° (gr8080), Tuesday, 25 March 2014 12:43 (ten years ago) link
some dude i liked your point about how the letterman video is way more popular than the nicely-shot, but fairly typical video. so many director's reel-style videos out there and they're so unmoving.
― socki (s1ocki), Tuesday, 25 March 2014 13:28 (ten years ago) link
i like the video a lot but agree it doesn't play to the band's strengths.
i was actually a little disoriented seeing them live in late 2012, having only seen the video for "balance" (no shots of the band) and only one press photo briefly. i don't know what i was expecting their appearance/performance to look and feel like but it wasn't that.
― °ㅇ๐ْ ° (gr8080), Tuesday, 25 March 2014 13:34 (ten years ago) link
i don't get what was special about that letterman performance? looked like overwrought karaoke. didn't like the song or especially his terrible voice either but even so the hype around the performance seems weird
― lex pretend, Tuesday, 25 March 2014 14:11 (ten years ago) link
Aside from the enormous dancing, the weirdness is in the hardcore growling he hints at on the beginnings of his phrases, then the moment of real hardcore growl at the end
― continually topping myself (flamboyant goon tie included), Tuesday, 25 March 2014 14:22 (ten years ago) link
the dancing is just amateur incompetence à la every dorky white dude at a wedding ever. s0 authentic
i did not think the moments of growling were that weird or confrontational or compelling but maybe growing up on tori amos just set the bar high in terms of what i expect performances of on-stage catharsis to be like
― lex pretend, Tuesday, 25 March 2014 14:26 (ten years ago) link
Would love to go to a wedding where someone dances like that.
― Kitchen Person, Tuesday, 25 March 2014 14:28 (ten years ago) link
what makes the performance special is that it's a moment of complete self-possession, which is not really something we get much of these days, especially on nat'l tv.
― call all destroyer, Tuesday, 25 March 2014 14:28 (ten years ago) link
uhhh I have never seen anyone dance like that in real life, ever (not even white people!)
― frogbs, Tuesday, 25 March 2014 14:29 (ten years ago) link
Yeah, for me the weird thing is precisely that it comes across like overwrought karaoke, yet knowingly performed as sincere and earnest. Sort of a mockery of prog-pop chart music of the 80s (I'm thinking of Genesis/Peter Gabriel/Phil Collins, maybe? Although I also hear a schmaltzy Tom Jones-seque vibe in that performance), but also played straight. The affective grunts, metal vocals and other stuff are sort of hints or punctures to its actually being something else.
If I'd make a criticism of it tho, I'd say it all ends up feeling more like pomo performance art, blank parody, which is possibly neither here nor there when it comes to pop music anyhow.
― MikoMcha, Tuesday, 25 March 2014 14:33 (ten years ago) link
Actually, the reaching to the sky thing in the chorus reminded me a bit of Tenacious D for a second, but not enough to completely ruin it.
― MikoMcha, Tuesday, 25 March 2014 14:36 (ten years ago) link
like, i can totally see why people find the letterman thing charming, why the growling impresses people who like growling more than i do, but when we get to "moment of complete self-possession" i kind of have to fart
― da croupier, Tuesday, 25 March 2014 14:37 (ten years ago) link
i don't think it was remotely that interesting or out of the ordinary. you could take any given tv performance and talk about how "knowing" or "sincere" or "earnest" it was and it'd be as much projection and guesswork as any other. the line between "performed" and "real" is kinda meaningless when it comes to on-stage catharsis
― lex pretend, Tuesday, 25 March 2014 14:37 (ten years ago) link
oh the chest-beating made me roll my eyes
Sure. There's a sense of sympathetic embarrassment going on.
― MikoMcha, Tuesday, 25 March 2014 14:40 (ten years ago) link
weird lex, i'd have thought you would've been all over the latest indie rock sensation!
― socki (s1ocki), Tuesday, 25 March 2014 14:40 (ten years ago) link
It's true that the performance, while odd, is nowhere near as unusual as is being claimed in some quarters (especially that overexcitable Guardian piece).
― Matt DC, Tuesday, 25 March 2014 14:57 (ten years ago) link
we need to figure out EXACTLY how weird it is.
― socki (s1ocki), Tuesday, 25 March 2014 14:57 (ten years ago) link
― lex pretend, Tuesday, March 25, 2014 10:37 AM (19 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
yeah those are not the words i would use, it's just a guy owning his moment and it's cool to watch.
― call all destroyer, Tuesday, 25 March 2014 14:59 (ten years ago) link
i thought of barry from east enders doing "walking in memphis", but he's got a cool eddie munster / ernest borgnine thing going, and i enjoyed it, and it was infinitely better than the last not-weird "weird" thing that got hyped to high heaven when gobshite bradford cox "had a meltdown" (quite unremarkably jamming through an extended 80's pop cover, endlessly reported as if it were some kinda gg allin vs jj burnel incident, for no discernible reason)
― massaman gai, Tuesday, 25 March 2014 16:32 (ten years ago) link
Gonna leave this here without comment
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMEBKZGHWCM
― voodoo chili, Tuesday, 25 March 2014 16:36 (ten years ago) link
quantum leap
― POO: the blossom or full flower of the evening (Sufjan Grafton), Tuesday, 25 March 2014 17:06 (ten years ago) link
LOL
― ▴▲ ▴TH3CR()$BY$H()W▴▲ ▴ (Adam Bruneau), Tuesday, 25 March 2014 17:40 (ten years ago) link
I'd be a huge fan if he exclusively rapped about Scott Bakula's guest role as Chuck's Dad on Chuck.
― voodoo chili, Tuesday, 25 March 2014 17:43 (ten years ago) link
album's starting to grow on me, "A Dream of You and Me" is as good as anything they've done, that groove, that insistent guitar lick
― anonanon, Wednesday, 26 March 2014 00:26 (ten years ago) link
yeah, I've been enjoying the album today as well. my brother met Sam before the show tonight and confirmed that he is very nice. They also have Two Hearted Ale for $2.50 a pint in Grand Rapids, Michigan, which is a good argument for seeing shows in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
― POO: the blossom or full flower of the evening (Sufjan Grafton), Wednesday, 26 March 2014 01:00 (ten years ago) link
Re. lex's comments and rebuttals, his energy in the Letterman video is, in my opinion, what's unusual about it. I mean, if you don't like his voice, you don't like it, but there's the soul music connotation and I'll go ahead and put myself out on the limb and say that I DO hear it as real soul singing. And you might say, 'So what?' but his physicality in the whole performance strikes me as quite awesome.
― timellison, Wednesday, 26 March 2014 04:05 (ten years ago) link
lex i never understand why you go out of your way to avoid megapopular monoculture shit like gangnam style but you just keep trying with these random american indie bands with < a million YT views
― linda cardellini (zachlyon), Wednesday, 26 March 2014 04:33 (ten years ago) link
will you ever win
woah this is like a bizarro world Henry Rollins who grew up the son of a preacher man and decided to leave the ministry and become Rick Astley instead.
― wk, Wednesday, 26 March 2014 07:52 (ten years ago) link
I said this elsewhere but to me he's a cocktail of Andy McCluskey, Rick Astley and Damian Abraham (the facial similarities to Damian are remarkable)
― continually topping myself (flamboyant goon tie included), Wednesday, 26 March 2014 08:13 (ten years ago) link
a young marlon brando says i
― Yarli Simon (rattled), Wednesday, 26 March 2014 08:25 (ten years ago) link
It's almost as if Lex is a dick or something
― sonic thedgehod (albvivertine), Wednesday, 26 March 2014 08:45 (ten years ago) link
Being a dick abt indie, anyway. Not a dick per se. It's a funny schtick, anyway
― sonic thedgehod (albvivertine), Wednesday, 26 March 2014 08:46 (ten years ago) link
xpostGet quite a strong young Shatner aiming for Brando vibe tbh.
― Stevie T, Wednesday, 26 March 2014 08:49 (ten years ago) link
My god, so OTM.
― Matt DC, Wednesday, 26 March 2014 10:45 (ten years ago) link
maybe growing up on tori amos just set the bar high in terms of what i expect performances of on-stage catharsis to be like
I've seen Tori Amos live multiple times and the idea that she represents the ne plus ultra of on-stage catharsis is just ridiculous
― my father will guide me up the stairs to bed (anagram), Wednesday, 26 March 2014 10:49 (ten years ago) link
Lex is always right, even about genres he talks about hating all the time.
― online hardman, Wednesday, 26 March 2014 10:51 (ten years ago) link
Todd Carty is currently starring in the Commitments at the Eastbourne Winter Gardens
― emmeline skankhurst (NickB), Wednesday, 26 March 2014 10:53 (ten years ago) link
there's a thing going around tumblr about how this performance captures the free-spirited magic of singing in your bathroom or something, which reminded me of this clearly prescient mr show sketch
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvCmvSKenzY#t=18
― da croupier, Thursday, 27 March 2014 14:40 (ten years ago) link
As previously noted (and I know you are capturing the opinion of tumblr here), he works the camera like a pro and he's a good singer. Though it's fun to look at the higher order terms of the function that's captured mr. letterman's heart, I think the bands' fundamentals are more refined than these analyses acknowledge.
― POO: the blossom or full flower of the evening (Sufjan Grafton), Thursday, 27 March 2014 15:34 (ten years ago) link
Oh the piece in question, I think by "fek", def acknowledged their legitimate skills or whatever you're worried is lost in the hubbub
― da croupier, Thursday, 27 March 2014 15:50 (ten years ago) link
Coldplay @coldplay Mar 23Guy found this video of Future Islands on Letterman. We all love it! http://youtu.be/1Ee4bfu_t3c CM
― Matt DC, Thursday, 27 March 2014 15:54 (ten years ago) link
xp ok, cool. I will search it out and read it as penance.
― POO: the blossom or full flower of the evening (Sufjan Grafton), Thursday, 27 March 2014 16:01 (ten years ago) link
I saw this for the first time, it's entertaining but I'm gonna put the 'viral' success down to slow news week. Dude looks like he's trying to do a version of that "Tom Jones goes crazy" video, only indie rock, and thus, way more awkward.
― ▴▲ ▴TH3CR()$BY$H()W▴▲ ▴ (Adam Bruneau), Thursday, 27 March 2014 16:29 (ten years ago) link
just to make it clear, Future Islands have always been like this live. even when they're an opening act playing for 100 people.
― frogbs, Thursday, 27 March 2014 16:41 (ten years ago) link
this was amazing and all of you who are jaded idiots are jaded and idiots
― j., Friday, 28 March 2014 02:51 (ten years ago) link