Future Islands - On The Water

seems like the clear highlight to me

re Fargo show: They were loud, but the vox and keyboard/synth got buried in the mix. Singing style seemed less affected than on the new album. No bongos involved in opening act.

Singles is a massive grower. Got round to listening to their previous two albums too. They are not really what I was expecting, quite strange records but very enjoyable.

I have this really exciting of feeling of finding a new favourite band. Already been checking out t-shirts on their website.

Oh, also have to agree that Song For Our Grandfathers is just wonderful.

It has been a joy discovering this band of late. No idea how I'd overlooked them, right up my street. Came across them on the back of praise for 'Singles' and while it's great 'In Evening Air' totally blew me away. A wonderful record.

That Letterman performance linked upthread is outstanding, one of the best live on TV things I've ever seen. The vocalist seems like a lovely guy in interviews and I think he has an amazing and expressive voice. One thing that is nagging me though, and I hope I don't ruin the band for anyone, is the similarity I just can't shake between him and *shudders* Jack Black.

i get more of a young brando look personally

jack black has a great voice

he used to be heavier so it was more clear he was a fellow "surprisingly agile rotund dude"

I can't get the mental image of the guy from Crash Test Dummies doing a Joe Cocker impression when I listen to this band. Even that doesn't stop me from enjoying the album though.

http://thetalkhouse.com/reviews/view/andrew-mccluskey-future-islands

^ omd's mccluskey loves, respects it

catching up on this thread just prompted me to watch the letterman clip again. dude is just entrancing, moreso with each viewing, i think.

Opinions on Chris Coady's role in the album's sound?

Am I the only one getting a Fine Young Cannibals vibe from this? Or is that old news?

I mentioned Roland Gift in my review: his voice mixes Gift, Wayne Casey, and David Johansen.

i got a rod stewart vibe, right off the bat.

Okay, so I just watched their Coachella performance on Youtube and pissed myself laughing throughout. You'd think that this kind of thing would be exactly up my street, but sadly not.

A friend of mine just summed it up as "a Gerry Anderson puppet on cowies growling incomprehensibly over piss-weak electro pop". Yup, that about sums up my view also.

^Lol this guy bloke.

major future islands takedown pip pip cheerio

A friend of mine just summed it up as "a Gerry Anderson puppet on cowies growling incomprehensibly over piss-weak electro pop". Yup, that about sums up my view also.

― Toni Braxton-Hicks (Turrican)

This guy is a fan. http://thetalkhouse.com/reviews/view/andrew-mccluskey-future-islands

what the fuck is cowies?

any1 catch these guys on Letterman?

This guy is a fan. http://thetalkhouse.com/reviews/view/andrew-mccluskey-future-islands

― Kitchen Person, Monday, April 14, 2014 10:06 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yeah, I saw that posted above. I'm a huge OMD fan but... nah, this isn't for me.

Carl Wilson:

With Future Islands, it’s like they’ve put the post-coital cigarette at the beginning of the song and ended it with the casual accidental meeting. The storyboards of their relationship to the audience are cut and shuffled and fanned out and scrambled – and yet by the close, like a street magician, they look up and smile, and say, “So was your card the King of Hearts?” And we say, yes, goddamn it, yes, it was. How did you do that?

http://333sound.com/2014/04/21/lets-talk-about-love-week-the-sound-of-post-taste-pop-future-islands-play-seasons-waiting-on-you-on-david-letterman-march-2014/

Also,

It’s schmaltz that via either semiotic brilliance or lucky poetic misfire plays for higher stakes.

I like Carl, but when he writes that the song is a "logical successor to “Yacht Rock” as a genre due for semi-ironic reclamation" I grind my teeth all over again. I'm only a handful of years younger than he so, show or not, what the hell is so unpalatable about, what, the Michael McDonald-led Doobie Bros that needed semi-ironic reclamation?

The closest the Doobie Bros. have come to semi-ironic reclamation has been via people your age and my age who half-fondly remember that one episode of "What's Happening?"

i sort of vehemently disagree that future islands has anything to do with yacht rock

like, i want to believe there was a time where this just would have been a well-constructed song with an expressive vocal and we wouldn't have needed any more analysis than that

I like Carl, but when he writes that the song is a "logical successor to “Yacht Rock” as a genre due for semi-ironic reclamation" I grind my teeth all over again. I'm only a handful of years younger than he so, show or not, what the hell is so unpalatable about, what, the Michael McDonald-led Doobie Bros that needed semi-ironic reclamation?

― guess that bundt gettin eaten (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, April 21, 2014 6:58 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah sometimes i wonder if he learned the supposed lesson of his own book

also agree with cad, it's kind of hilarious that all a band has to do is wear slacks and people freak out about what non-punk lineage they might dare have

Yeah, I vote not very yachty at all. Is it the mostly smooth vox that does it? But, like, Tom Jones is not yacht rock, either.

wondering if these semi-ironic reclamations have to do with good listeners and critics still in thrall to what they think are punk orthodoxies.

there's also no real relation of any kind to Tom Jones either, tbf

*throws panties*

I guess I think of these guys asa synth pop band, like OMD, so yeahb the soft rock thing is weird to me. Esp the bass lines are so post punk to me

wait was was the supposed lesson of the book

i don't see how you can regard this record as anything but synth-pop, which has a healthy tradition of appreciation by the alt/indie set already and is in no need of any reclaiming/reappreciation in and of itself

(could be that this is a resurgence of a certain mode of ~feeling~ in that music, though)

xp yup those types of bands are their logical forebears, i guess that's not interesting enough or something

Not so synthpop at the live show I saw. Rather hard to pin down, actually, and surely this is a good thing.

If anything there's an element of James Murphy to it. A huskier, middle-aged guy totally giving his all vocally, albeit eccentrically, over dancy, synthy post-punk. I recall some interview with Murphy where he even had to ask if his take of I want to say "I Can Change" was too ott. Seems apropo.

what the heck future islands is totally of the new romantic era if anything

these guys couldn't be any more synth-pop if they used wang chung as a verb

just clicked through to the carl wilson piece and ffs alfred learn how to read

Breaking it down, the song scoops into mid-1980s U.K. synth-soul brie, a logical successor to “Yacht Rock” as a genre due for semi-ironic reclamation, but also has a hook that’s hard to forget.

He's saying "UK synth-soul brie" is due for reclamation, LIKE yacht rock already had

though lol that apparently none of us bothered to check for ourselves what carl had to say before casting our votes

He's still a monster imo

If anything there's an element of James Murphy to it. A huskier, middle-aged guy totally giving his all vocally, albeit eccentrically, over dancy, synthy post-punk. I recall some interview with Murphy where he even had to ask if his take of I want to say "I Can Change" was too ott. Seems apropo.

― Josh in Chicago, Monday, April 21, 2014 11:42 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

middle-aged? the members of Future Islands are 30ish and started the band in college.

As a guy pushing 40, I will say that, yes, that counts as middle aged in indie rock years.

You'd have to work out some algorithm factoring in things like coolness/attractiveness/genetic history/gender etc for that to be a workable system tho ie. can we just use years years

I use indie dog years.

time is a flat circle

You just say that because he's balding

http://99gifs.com/-img/5318e62f1605fb7efb0000e3.gif?w=400&h=225