Nick Thorburn has the power to electrify. He's always had it, from his beginnings fronting tweelectro-pop band the Unicorns, through his and drummer Jamie Thompson's second-generation outfit Islands, and even at points in supergroups (Mister Heavenly, Human Highway) and his own solo projects. The songwriter formerly-and-still-sometimes known as Nick Diamonds has demonstrated a singular grasp on inventive songwriting that wriggles its way into gray matter. His twinkling melodies, vivid lyricism, and off-the-wall banter can amplify the rich depth of his influences, from Paul Simon's Graceland and calypso to weird hip-hop and mother nature. But power amounts to little when it's not employed. Which is all to say that when Thorburn tries for something more muted-- as on Islands' fifth LP, Ski Mask-- the result isn't a disaster; his music in this mode can actually be pretty nice, if a little vanilla.
It's been a slow process, but over time, Islands have changed considerably. Like a photocopy of a photocopy, the imagination of each album that has followed their explosive 2006 entrance Return to the Sea has faded, until reaching an end point on 2012's A Sleep and a Forgetting. The latter record actually worked in its simplicity, serving as a touching emotional rock bottom from which the band-- or more accurately Thorburn, since who even knows the ever-rotating members of Islands anymore, after Thompson's departure in 2008-- has now rebounded. Thematically Ski Mask is indeed "angry," as Thorburn says in a press release, but it's also desperate, dejected, and occasionally sweet. But the rawness of Forgetting has disappeared again, and the music itself pales in comparison to the blithely complex experimentalism that set the bar high in the first place.
Thorburn's preternatural gift for songwriting keeps Ski Mask from being a bad record. Vaudevillian ditty "Nil", sounding like a holdover from his days collaborating with Man Man frontman Honus Honus in Mister Heavenly, explores self-destruction with an idiosyncratic level of cheese. Clever lines like "I did a line from a script that I wrote/ I felt the words in the back of my throat" on "Death Drive" and basically all of opening track "Wave Forms", when contrasted with the clunkiness of metaphors in "Becoming the Gunship", prove Thorburn's knack for memorable wordplay comes and goes these days. Instrumentally, the record is more classically Islands, with a few trademark flares (their calypso xylophone, their cutesy theremin), though several progressions skirt self-plagiarism (the guitar on album closer "Winged Beat Drums" sounds like a repurposed demo for Arm's Way's "The Arm" or "Creeper"). The electro-gallop of "Sad Middle" is easily likable and will probably be the best live performance from Mask.
It's all pleasant, but when it's over, the only truly memorable song is "Wave Forms"-- which might have made for a grand exit, had it been placed at the end of the album instead of the beginning. The brilliance of Islands (and the Unicorns, previously) has hinged on Thorburn and Co.'s ability to combine a perfectionist's hunger for innovation with a self-deprecating lightness that flirts with goofiness; Ski Mask, like its most recent, similarly self-serious predecessors, rarely finds either.
