Future Islands - On The Water

they've really paid their dues haven't they? been gigging hard for years. good to see them finally getting some payback.

thx!

yeah that was an excellent profile

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.

:D

^srsly every anecdote i've heard about dude (including mine upthread) makes him sound like the best guy ever

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.

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.

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

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

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

Would love to go to a wedding where someone dances like that.

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.

the dancing is just amateur incompetence à la every dorky white dude at a wedding ever. s0 authentic

uhhh I have never seen anyone dance like that in real life, ever (not even white people!)

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.

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.

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

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

oh the chest-beating made me roll my eyes

Sure. There's a sense of sympathetic embarrassment going on.

weird lex, i'd have thought you would've been all over the latest indie rock sensation!

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).

we need to figure out EXACTLY how weird it is.

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, 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.

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)

Gonna leave this here without comment

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMEBKZGHWCM

quantum leap

LOL

I'd be a huge fan if he exclusively rapped about Scott Bakula's guest role as Chuck's Dad on Chuck.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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)

a young marlon brando says i

It's almost as if Lex is a dick or something

Being a dick abt indie, anyway. Not a dick per se. It's a funny schtick, anyway

xpost
Get quite a strong young Shatner aiming for Brando vibe tbh.

My god, so OTM.

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

Lex is always right, even about genres he talks about hating all the time.

Todd Carty is currently starring in the Commitments at the Eastbourne Winter Gardens

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

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.

Oh the piece in question, I think by "fek", def acknowledged their legitimate skills or whatever you're worried is lost in the hubbub

Coldplay ‏@coldplay Mar 23
Guy found this video of Future Islands on Letterman. We all love it! http://youtu.be/1Ee4bfu_t3c CM

xp ok, cool. I will search it out and read it as penance.

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.