Future Islands have long blended moments of bliss and ecstasy with heartbreak. They thrive in this gap: the thoroughline of Baltimore band’s music is that their transcendent, New Wave-inspired songs have a tendency to end with a positive resolution, even if it doesn’t quite look that way in the beginning. The prevailing mood is of self-belief.
Having emerged in the early 2010s, some of the quartet’s biggest singles – particularly the masterful ‘Seasons (Waiting On You)’, which NME declared the best song of 2014 – continue to soundtrack exhilarating highs, both on-screen and at festivals across the globe. Most recently, the track was used in Season Two of British LGBTQ+ comedy Big Boys, heightening the emotion and romance of a pivotal scene that depicted the overwhelming feelings that emerge as a new relationship begins to cement itself.
Cynicism, therefore, has traditionally been absent in the world of Future Islands. Yet on the band’s seventh LP ‘People Who Aren’t There Anymore’, themes of divorce, grief and desperation loom large, inspired by breakups that both lead vocalist Samuel T Herring and bassist William Cashion have recently gone through. It feels appropriate that they would emerge from a period of personal upheaval with tracks that consider the cathartic potential of change, then. Album highlight ‘Thief’, a true meeting of music and message, pairs breathless confessions with a kinetic percussion section. “The pain is never ending / But I’m forgiving, at least,” Herring sings.
‘Peach’, ‘The Tower’ and ‘Say Goodbye’ are all classic Future Islands offerings, using upbeat textures from ‘80s pop and roaring to life off the back of a muscular groove or drum kick. The effect is warm but unshakably familiar, and it means that individual moments shine a little less: only the dusky atmospherics of ‘Deep In The Night’ feel like a true outlier here.
There’s no question that Herring still writes songs capable of evoking strong emotions, but this time around they can occasionally feel too twinkly and repetitive. What’s missing is some risk-taking; unpredictable production flourishes that could better reflect the overall mood of the album and all the ambiguities that accompany a major life change.
That’s why ‘People Who Aren’t There Anymore’ just falls short of its goal of becoming a transformative record for the band. It has its winning moments – ‘Iris’ pulls off a tricky balance of being irresistibly catchy and yet moving – but as big new beginnings go, Future Islands deliver a streamlined version.
